I have recently moved into a property, it has awful! (i mean AWFUL!) walls, all been covered in woodchip but badly! apparently they are dry lined which means nothing to me..and so I cant steam it off? was wondering can anyone help as to what i can do to firstly remove the woodchip and patch up the walls with out re-plastering as just had a baby and dont have the money for it yet!

On Aug 17, 12:05*am, LucyFinnley
wrote:
I have recently moved into a property, it has awful! (i mean AWFUL!)
walls, all been covered in woodchip but badly! apparently they are dry
lined which means nothing to me..and so I cant steam it off?

Houses used to be made of lumpy masonry which was then plastered with
wet plaster and smoothed off. From the 1960s, increasingly they're dry-
lined instead. Sheets of factory made plasterboard (aka sheetrock in
the USA) are screwed to a wooden framework. This is quicker, cheaper
and less demanding of the plasterer's skill. Although wet plastering
still goes on, dry lining is very common. Plasterboard is made of a
layer of plaster sandwiched between two sheets of cardboard - it's not
fond of getting too wet.

You can strip wallpaper from plasterboard most easily by steaming it
off. This uses less water than the old wet soak with cold water, so it
has much less risk of damaging the plasterboard. It's still _possible_
of course, but you have to be quite ham-fisted.

Wallpaper stripping is probably described on the DIY wiki. Here's how
I do it though:

Tools:
* Perforator. A spikey roller. Mine looks like a plastic tortoise with
two wheels under it. Don't get the 6 wheeler - you have to press too
hard.
* Steam wallpaper stripper. Cheap. £20-30 (or car boot). Earlex are
good. Don't buy an expensive one, they don't work any better. You can
hire these, but the cheap ones are cheap.
* Gloves. Something light and steamproof, like a silicone oven glove.
You only need one of these (if your gloves are thick & clumsy), as the
hand carrying the steamer doesn't get steamed as much as the other.
* Scrapers. All those you can find. Mostly I use one about 3" wide.
The stiffness of the blade makes a big difference, so I have
favourites. Not the expensive bolstered Harris one, but actually a
Tesco cheapie - it just has a springier blade.
* Drop cloths to cover the floor etc. Old curtains / bedsheets, cheap
fabric, garden fleece
* Copious binliners, vacuum etc for cleanup

Clear a working space of a couple of feet minimum in front of the
wall. Cover the rest of the carpet & furniture with your drop cloths.

Loosen or remove light switches and fittings (optional, but easier)
NB - this may involve working around electrics, so you don't have to
if you don't want. Make sure the electric hazard is OK - i.e. nothing
too bare hanging out in the breeze.

If the wall is vinyl wallpaper, then this usually rips in half quite
easily. The top layer can be pried up at one corner, then the whole
top surface rips off slowly, splitting the paper through its middle.
Sometimes you can even stop there, if you're just trying to get a
simple surface to paint onto.

Warm up your steamer. Most have 45 minutes of steaming time on one
fill and take 5-10 minutes to get to temperature. Place the steamer
plate or nozzle in a plastic bucket, so that it doesn't dribble hot
water all over the carpet.

Perforate the wall with your spikey thing. Especially if the paper is
vinyl or has been painted over, you need to perforate that top layer
so that the steam can get through to the back. Doesn't have to be
perfect, just help it along a bit.

The Power of Steam! Steam a square foot or two of wallpaper, until
you can get your scraper into the now softened wallpaper paste behind
and gently peel the wallpaper off the wall. Don't rush, let the steam
do the work for you. When it works the wallpaper comes off easily.
If it doesn't work, apply more steam. Try some steam down the back if
you have to.

For thin papers, these cool down and dry out again quickly, so work on
a small area for steam/scrape. For heavy papers, they take more time
to soften so work on a bigger area at a time and maybe revisit each
patch with the steamer a couple of times before you scrape. See how it
goes.

How to screw it all up!

* Steam the plasterboard for so long that the plasterboard falls
apart. This is really careless and isn't a big risk.

* Sticking the scraper too deeply into the plasterboard. This is quite
easy to do and a bit of a risk. Plasterboard's surface is only
cardboard - make sure you are scraping _between_ the paper and the
board, not into the plasterboard surface. Also keep the scraper quite
flat, rather than digging divots out.

Once you've removed most of the paper, go back with the steamer and
get the stragglers.

Clean up, leave to dry out. Clean up straight away! Don't leave
papier mache lying around going hard and sticking to the windowsills,
as it'll be hard to clean up tomorrow.

If you've scraped the plasterboard, a bit of plaster or polyfilla will
sort that.

On 17/08/2012 11:04, Andy Dingley wrote:
On Aug 17, 12:05 am, LucyFinnley
wrote:
I have recently moved into a property, it has awful! (i mean AWFUL!)
walls, all been covered in woodchip but badly! apparently they are dry
lined which means nothing to me..and so I cant steam it off?

Houses used to be made of lumpy masonry which was then plastered with
wet plaster and smoothed off. From the 1960s, increasingly they're dry-
lined instead. Sheets of factory made plasterboard (aka sheetrock in
the USA) are screwed to a wooden framework. This is quicker, cheaper
and less demanding of the plasterer's skill. Although wet plastering
still goes on, dry lining is very common. Plasterboard is made of a
layer of plaster sandwiched between two sheets of cardboard - it's not
fond of getting too wet.

You can strip wallpaper from plasterboard most easily by steaming it
off. This uses less water than the old wet soak with cold water, so it
has much less risk of damaging the plasterboard. It's still _possible_
of course, but you have to be quite ham-fisted.

Wallpaper stripping is probably described on the DIY wiki. Here's how
I do it though:

Tools:
* Perforator. A spikey roller. Mine looks like a plastic tortoise with
two wheels under it. Don't get the 6 wheeler - you have to press too
hard.
* Steam wallpaper stripper. Cheap. £20-30 (or car boot). Earlex are
good. Don't buy an expensive one, they don't work any better. You can
hire these, but the cheap ones are cheap.
* Gloves. Something light and steamproof, like a silicone oven glove.
You only need one of these (if your gloves are thick & clumsy), as the
hand carrying the steamer doesn't get steamed as much as the other.
* Scrapers. All those you can find. Mostly I use one about 3" wide.
The stiffness of the blade makes a big difference, so I have
favourites. Not the expensive bolstered Harris one, but actually a
Tesco cheapie - it just has a springier blade.
* Drop cloths to cover the floor etc. Old curtains / bedsheets, cheap
fabric, garden fleece
* Copious binliners, vacuum etc for cleanup

Clear a working space of a couple of feet minimum in front of the
wall. Cover the rest of the carpet & furniture with your drop cloths.

Loosen or remove light switches and fittings (optional, but easier)
NB - this may involve working around electrics, so you don't have to
if you don't want. Make sure the electric hazard is OK - i.e. nothing
too bare hanging out in the breeze.

If the wall is vinyl wallpaper, then this usually rips in half quite
easily. The top layer can be pried up at one corner, then the whole
top surface rips off slowly, splitting the paper through its middle.
Sometimes you can even stop there, if you're just trying to get a
simple surface to paint onto.

Warm up your steamer. Most have 45 minutes of steaming time on one
fill and take 5-10 minutes to get to temperature. Place the steamer
plate or nozzle in a plastic bucket, so that it doesn't dribble hot
water all over the carpet.

Perforate the wall with your spikey thing. Especially if the paper is
vinyl or has been painted over, you need to perforate that top layer
so that the steam can get through to the back. Doesn't have to be
perfect, just help it along a bit.

The Power of Steam! Steam a square foot or two of wallpaper, until
you can get your scraper into the now softened wallpaper paste behind
and gently peel the wallpaper off the wall. Don't rush, let the steam
do the work for you. When it works the wallpaper comes off easily.
If it doesn't work, apply more steam. Try some steam down the back if
you have to.

For thin papers, these cool down and dry out again quickly, so work on
a small area for steam/scrape. For heavy papers, they take more time
to soften so work on a bigger area at a time and maybe revisit each
patch with the steamer a couple of times before you scrape. See how it
goes.

How to screw it all up!

* Steam the plasterboard for so long that the plasterboard falls
apart. This is really careless and isn't a big risk.

* Sticking the scraper too deeply into the plasterboard. This is quite
easy to do and a bit of a risk. Plasterboard's surface is only
cardboard - make sure you are scraping _between_ the paper and the
board, not into the plasterboard surface. Also keep the scraper quite
flat, rather than digging divots out.

Once you've removed most of the paper, go back with the steamer and
get the stragglers.

Clean up, leave to dry out. Clean up straight away! Don't leave
papier mache lying around going hard and sticking to the windowsills,
as it'll be hard to clean up tomorrow.

If you've scraped the plasterboard, a bit of plaster or polyfilla will
sort that.

+1, an excellent description. Personally I manage without a spiky thing
even over painted paper, I think it is the temperature as much as the
moisture that does the business. And very much agree that the amount of
springiness in the scraper makes a lot of difference, you need a stiffer
scraper for some things than others.

On Aug 17, 1:24*pm, newshound wrote:
Personally I manage without a spiky thing
even over painted paper,

I always perforate, but if you don't have a spikey thing, scratching
lines into the surface of the paper with the corner of your wallpaper
scraper works fine too.

LucyFinnley wrote:
I have recently moved into a property, it has awful! (i mean AWFUL!)
walls, all been covered in woodchip but badly! apparently they are dry
lined which means nothing to me..and so I cant steam it off? was
wondering can anyone help as to what i can do to firstly remove the
woodchip and patch up the walls with out re-plastering as just had a
baby and dont have the money for it yet!

It means the woodchip is stuck directly to the plasterboard, and regardless
of any well-meaning advice here, you can't get it off without damaging the
plasterboard underneath which will then require plastering before
re-decoration can take place.
My advice is to leave it alone until you've got the money to do one room at
a time, plastering isn't expensive, but you may find that not all the walls
are drylined, IE, some of them may already be plastered

On 17/08/2012 14:44, Phil L wrote:
LucyFinnley wrote:
I have recently moved into a property, it has awful! (i mean AWFUL!)
walls, all been covered in woodchip but badly! apparently they are dry
lined which means nothing to me..and so I cant steam it off? was
wondering can anyone help as to what i can do to firstly remove the
woodchip and patch up the walls with out re-plastering as just had a
baby and dont have the money for it yet!

It means the woodchip is stuck directly to the plasterboard, and regardless
of any well-meaning advice here, you can't get it off without damaging the
plasterboard underneath which will then require plastering before
re-decoration can take place.
My advice is to leave it alone until you've got the money to do one room at
a time, plastering isn't expensive, but you may find that not all the walls
are drylined, IE, some of them may already be plastered

I would agree, however also mention that whether the plasterboard was
skimmed or not (i.e. a very thin coat of plaster applied to hide the
screw heads, boards joints etc) will make a big difference. Getting wood
chip off plaster is hard, off skimmed plasterboard a bit harder but
still doable, and off unskimmed boards, pretty much a non starter (well
you can do it, but will have to skim afterwards to get a decent finish
again).


--
Cheers,

John.

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On 17/08/2012 14:44, Phil L wrote:

My advice is to leave it alone until you've got the money to do one room at
a time, plastering isn't expensive, but you may find that not all the walls
are drylined, IE, some of them may already be plastered

Probably the most sensible advice, can be a little variable in terms of
cost versus quality though.

Recently had cause to hang one of those expensive German thermal lining
papers on a condensation-prone cold outside wall - mention it because
they say it also covers woodchip very well...

On Aug 17, 12:05*am, LucyFinnley
wrote:
I have recently moved into a property, it has awful! (i mean AWFUL!)
walls, all been covered in woodchip but badly! apparently they are dry
lined which means nothing to me..and so I cant steam it off? was
wondering can anyone help as to what i can do to firstly remove the
woodchip and patch up the walls with out re-plastering as just had a
baby and dont have the money for it yet!

It sounds like you'll need to get the walls skimmed afterwards. In
which case, if you don't have cavity walls, this is absolutely the
time to put insulation on the wall (on top of the woodchip) before
plastering. Its possible to work out the payback for insulation.

If you're brassic, and willing to accept a less than perfect finish,
you could try plaster skimming yourself.


NT

On Sun, 19 Aug 2012 03:34:01 -0700 (PDT), NT
wrote:

It sounds like you'll need to get the walls skimmed afterwards. In
which case, if you don't have cavity walls, this is absolutely the
time to put insulation on the wall (on top of the woodchip) before
plastering. Its possible to work out the payback for insulation.

OP - congratulations on your baby.

When I was in a similar situation, I read many recommendations for
using kingspan or celotex or similar to insulate walls and I always
thought it sounded like more expense and hassle and was making the job
bigger. It is frustrating when you move in somewhere and want
everything done at once. I have slowly been decorating one room at a
time. I have insulated the last couple of rooms that I have decorated
and it is not as daunting as it sounds and I wish I had done it sooner
and done it in the other rooms.

Not only will it keep heat in in winter, the south side of the house
gets too hot in the sun and I wonder whether it might have kept the
excessive heat out too. 50mm seems to be the recommended thickness to
use. I did do one room with 25mm and I'll find out this winter whether
this is enough to make a difference!

You may find it makes a difference even if you have cavity insulation,
though obviously not as much as if you didn't have cavity insulation.

If you're brassic, and willing to accept a less than perfect finish,
you could try plaster skimming yourself.

I have also tried plastering and it is not mirror smooth but again,
not as daunting as it sounds and if it goes completely wrong you can
get someone to come in and plaster over your efforts.

HTH