"Patscga" wrote in message
...
I have a painter who tells me it is better to mud over the seams in the
wallpaper prior to painting than tearing off the paper. His reason is
that the
wall will be in worse shape after tearing off the paper.
Pat

Depends....

Are you doing the work? Hiring it out?

You can successfully remove almost any wallpaper and NOT ruin the wall, but
it takes time if the surface wasn't properly prepared before the wallpaper
was applied. If the wall was painted or primed before the wallpaper was
installed, you can probably pull it down fairly easily using a scorer,
wallpaper remover, and maybe a steamer. If the wall wasn't properly
prepared, it just takes ten times as long.

In either case, you can get the wallpaper down without tearing up the
sheetrock. However, if you get in a hurry, you can make a big mess and wreck
your sheetrock.

The *right* way to do it it to remove the wallpaper. The expedient way may
be to spackle the seams and paint over the wallpaper.

KB

On 20 Jul 2003 12:29:31 GMT, (Patscga) wrote:

I have a painter who tells me it is better to mud over the seams in the
wallpaper prior to painting than tearing off the paper. His reason is that the
wall will be in worse shape after tearing off the paper.
Pat

Depends on the paper and the wall.

I've had improperly applied paper remove the paper from the drywall.
In this case, I've been forced to mud over the rest of the seams, sand
and/or sponge it, Kilz it, and paint the final color. After the first
coat of paint, you're probably going to find areas where the wallpaper
had bubbles, these need to be slit, covered with mud, and sanded,
before repainting. You can't tell there's paper under the paint in
the room I did this, but it took a looong time to get excellent
results. The previous owners of my home applied paper, without sizing,
to raw drywall.

If possible, I prefer to remove the paper, with a remover like DIF,
pre-scoring the paper with a "Paper Tiger" tool. I find removing
the paper to be faster and cleaner overall, and I don't have to worry
about the paper eventually coming loose under the paint.

Barry