Mold in the kitchen, revisited

[Debi]

Hi!

First, Happy Passover ! Have a thoughtful Good Friday! Have a blessed Easter! Thank You, Lord, for caring about us.

_________________ the moldy wall project has grown into a government mouse ( an elephant by the time all the specs and regulations were included )

I put in a window fan to keep moisture down and vent the kitchen when I cook, so should solve the problem that led to the mold in the first place. I will insulate the bump-out on the garage side with styrofoam panels when I can get to it.

I had it all clean, ready to paint, and decided to remove the wallpaper border at chair height because it's behind things and is never seen - and it might harbor Mold.

I steamed it off, and the paint bubbles in spots. hmmmmm...wetness? I pulled the very thick layer of stretchy latex off a bit, and found they had painted OVER a layer of wallpaper. A 60's pattern that went well with coppertome appliances. I want 5 minutes in a locked room with Mr. Handyman!!

So, it's at least one heat gun day, scrape off the paint and get the wallpaper off. Behind it is a nice, hard coat of yellow oil based paint. Prob the original. THEN I will paint it..or maybe not. If it's a good, solid paint job, I will seal it with poly coat and just sponge paint a nice green that I have in the places it can be seen. Projects go thru many changes. _______________________________________ Debi

[Norminn]

clipped

There is absolutely no reason that painted-over wallpaper would be any more difficult to remove than plain wallpaper. Most paper has some kind of vinyl coating, which keeps moisture and steam from penetrating just as paint does. Just use a paper tiger or very coarse sandpaper to score the surface VERY CAREFULLY side-to-side, spray with water, let soak, spray again, let soak and then start scraping gently. Don't panic if there is a bit of mildew/mold under the paper along the seams - perfect spot to grow as moisture seeps into seams. Just wash the wall with cleaner/bleach, rinse, dry. If the wallboard is damaged, that's another story. We had large patches of mildew under our old bath paper, took it down, repapered and all is well. We had towel racks close to the wall on some seams, and that is likely what kept it damp enough to penetrate. Didn't damage the wallboard because it had been painted previously.

[Bob]

I curse forever the person(s) that painted several coats of probably oil based paint over wallpaper on my first house. I had to scrape the whole room hard with a fork to get the steam to touch the paper glue. That was a horrible project.

Bob

[Norminn]

I painted a neighbor's condo, which had two layers of paint over paper. What didn't pull off was easy to get with the coarse sandpaper/spray method. Messy, but who cares.