Painting plaster Vs papering then painting

[Tim Downie]

Having successfully removed the wallpaper from hell, we're now ready to redecorate.

The original plan had been to paint the original painted wallpaper but we found we couldn't smooth out some heavy stenciling that my daughter had done years ago so decided to remove the paper. This tuned out to much tougher than anticipated but it's all done now.

The new plan is to now either re-paper with lining paper and paint or patch the plaster and put paint directly on the plaster.

In the past we're always papered and painted but as this is a bedroom, I wonder if this is a bit OTT or is it what most folk do? If we do paint the plaster, are there any downsides (other than poorer abrasion resistance)? One thing that puts me off painting the plaster was that some of the worst paper to remove was stuff that had been applied over a small area of painted plaster.

Against re-papering and painting is the thought that it might be an absolute b*st*rd to remove again in the future (not that I'm planning on *ever* redecorating this room). I suspect our problem with stripping this time round was to do with the fact that the paint had been applied over the underlayer of partailly stripped vinyl wallpaper.

Any thoughts?

Tim

[Christian McArdle]

You only ever use paper because the plaster is unusable. However, you might as well reskim the room whilst you've got it in a state to. Then you've got perfect plaster ready for rolling the paint onto. OK, it might cost you more, but it is worth it.

Christian.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I agree in principle: Reskimming is always best, if you can find a plasterer at a sensible price to do it. My pasletering ois completely rubbish, so DIY isn't in the frame here.

Otherwise lining paper is quick, cheap, dirty (:-)) and gives a fairly good result at a lot less cash IMHO.