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!
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:
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!
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.
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.
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).
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...
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
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.
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
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