Q. I was thinking of wallpapering several rooms in my house. But after talking with some friends who have removed wallpaper from their houses, I think I might not do it. As they removed the paper, they ruined their walls. The paper facing on the drywall was ripped off. Is there a way to prevent this? What can my friends do to restore their drywall?
A. Ouch! I absolutely know how frustrated your friends must feel. Tell them not to panic though. There is an easy repair method that will restore the walls.
The sad thing is that all of the damage to the drywall face paper could have been prevented. Whoever installed the paper skipped a vital step. They failed to size the walls before they hung the paper.
Sizing walls sounds like a mysterious process, and it generates lots of puzzled looks from clerks at paint stores as well as homeowners.
Sizing is just a term used by older professional wallpaper hangers to describe priming and sealing walls. It’s a necessary process that allows wallpaper to be installed with ease and, if necessary, removed in the future with little or no effect on the wall substrate.
Many years ago, paperhangers applied diluted wheat paste adhesives on plaster walls to “size” them. This adhesive soaked into the fresh plaster and acted as a crude sealer.
Without the diluted adhesive coating, the adhesive on the back of the paper sucked into the bare plaster too quickly. This made it difficult to adjust and smooth the paper. In some instances, the wallpaper adhesive soaked so deeply into the plaster that little glue was left to hold the paper to the wall.
Modern wallpaper adhesives are very different than the old wheat paste glues. Some are so strong that they can penetrate through many porous wall paints and grab onto the wall surface beneath the paint. This is where many rookie paperhangers and homeowners get into trouble. They look at a painted wall and think that the wall has been primed and sealed. Indeed, the wall may have a paint primer on it, but this is not the right type of primer.
To prevent the high-strength paper adhesives from bonding to the drywall paper, you must apply a specialized primer/sealer made for wallpaper. This water-based low-odor product forms a tough barrier that paper adhesives cannot penetrate.
A primer/sealer works on painted drywall, bare drywall, paneling and even existing walls that already have wallpaper on them. The product looks just like paint and is applied the same way. What’s more, some brands can be tinted. You can color the primer to match the background color of the wallpaper. This feature comes in handy if a paper seam spreads apart later.
A primer/sealer also helps you when you hang paper. It slows the drying time of the adhesives so that you have plenty of time to adjust and trim the paper as you work each sheet. This characteristic is very important if you are double-cutting paper as you install inlaid borders within a paper pattern.
Note: Not all wallpaper sealer/primers are created equal. If you want the best performance, you will have to pay slightly more per gallon for it.
The damaged drywall at your friends’ houses can be salvaged with a similar product. Advise your friends to purchase a similar water-based sealer formulated specifically to seal unpainted or damaged drywall surface.
Before they apply this special sealer, they need to sand off any loose or ragged paper edges. The special sealer is blue when wet but dries clear. Because it dries clear, you can still see the damaged drywall areas. Your friends will appreciate this once they begin to apply the necessary skim coating that will transform the ugly mess into smooth walls once again.
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Write to Tim Carter, c/o The Chicago Tribune, P.O. Box 36352, Cincinnati, OH 45236-0352. Questions will be answered only in the column. For a list of brands of specialized primers for wallpaper and damaged drywall and other tips on wallpapering and repairing damaged drywall, please send $3 to the above address. Ask for Builder Bulletin No. 372. Want to talk to Tim? Call him from 9 to 11 a.m. Central on Saturdays toll-free at 888-737-1450. Surf with Tim at www.askthebuilder.com.
