Is plastering over old wallpaper a good idea in some situations?

[Jim T]

I have a on old (1890) house. The interior walls still have the original now-very-crumbly lime plaster. On some of these walls there is old woodchip wallpaper, covered in many coats of old paint. This paper looks like it would be very hard to remove without damaging the very weak plaste underneath. So I'm thinking of simply plastering over the old wallpaper. Are there any inherent problems with this tactic? I absolutely do not want to undertake the mammoth upheaval of removing the old plaster and replacing with new.

Thank you,

JimT

[Richard Conway]

Others may tell you it will be fine - but to me it sounds like a bodge. I would say that if the plaster behind the paper is so bad that it would crumble if the paper were removed, then the paper is already doing more than its fair share of work holding the lime plaster together, without giving it more to do by holding on a new layer of plaster!

I suppose it all depends if you are the type of person who gets a nice warm feeling when they put a bit of effort in and do a job 'properly'!

[ben]

I wouldn't advise plastering over wallpaper. If you don't want to remove the wallpaper then... Fix plasterboard over the walls to the studding/brickwork behind and then plaster the walls.

[Stuart Noble]

If you soak the whole thing in pva and skim a quick coat on while it's wet, it'll probably be a good enough surface.

[John Rumm]

People often seem to get scared by painted wood chip paper! I feel it has a reoutation for being hard to remove, when in reality is is not actually that difficult in many cases.

If you arm yourself with a *good* scraper - say:

wood chip can come off quite nicely if it has been painted. The wood chips make getting the scraper to bite nice and easy, and the paint keeps the paper together.

There is a fair chance the plaster will pull off the paper as it drys (and the paper gets wet). If you really wany to avoice stripping it, have you thought about dry lining the wall first and then skiming it?

[Rob Morley]

It's the only way you'll get the job done properly - anything else is a nasty bodge. You might find you can get away with skimming after you've removed the paper. The paper will probably pull away easily in large pieces.

[Séan Connolly]

I found this as well. Providing I kept the scraper sharp the woodchip came off really easily. Any residue that was left we just wiped with a wet sponge and then scraped it off.