Woodchip paper removal

I haven't tried to remove woodchip that has been painted with gloss from a ceiling but I suspect you will need to apply paint stripper first to dissolve the gloss, then use a steam wallpaper stripper. An alternative is to cover it over with one of the Polycell Smoothover products, but this is expensive and quite difficult to do as it is similar to putting a skim coat of plaster on the ceiling. You could leave well alone and just apply two coats of matt emulsion.

In article , fudgemonkey writes

It all depends on how well it is stuck to the ceiling. Once you have got under the crust with a scraper you may find that the painted surface reinforces the surface and you can peel it off in huge sheets.

If you're unlucky then you need to get moisture through the surface to the paste to loosen it which I do by perforating the surface then using a steam stripper. You can use a spiked roller type perforator but I've heard of people perforating woodchip by just scraping off the woodchip nibs. Although you could try the water & sponge route, a steam stripper will work better/faster on the double woodchip layer.

Use a sharp, wide scraper.

Don't even think of using paint stripper or skimming.

Cheers for the advice, think I'll go for the sharp scraper option first looking at the state of the paper. It makes me laugh when companies like Polycell produce new products to counteract their old ones (smoothover to fix polyripple).

Thanks

Mark

That's good business for you! In five years no doubt there'll be a new product to remove/nullify/counteract Smoothover.

We had this in a house we moved into in 1986. Every room, stairs and hallway had glosspainted woodchip. We used a steam stripper to soften the paste and scraped it off. Dirty nasty job that often took chunks of plaster with it. Took ages.

The inventors of woodchip should be strung up by the testicles over a slow fire made from wet woodchip.

"Alang" wrote

Brilliant stuff if you own a house let to students though.

Let it to art students and let them decorate. The walls might be worth millions one day

"cerberus" wrote >>

Painting Artexx is a nightmare, the paint flies everywhere. I had my artex walls plastered over and then woodchipped on top.

Nah, Artex is better for students....particularly along the staircase! ;-)

Don.