Re-painting Bathroom Walls

Our terrace house is about 100 years old with lime+sand backing to the original plaster. As part of more extensive work, we had the bathroom gutted and re-fitted (to a new plan) about five years ago. The contractor proved to be incompetent (do not ask) and left a trail of problems which I have been gradually fixing.

I subsequently decorated the bathroom (Dulux K&B soft sheen emulsion) and it is now time to re-decorate. The main problem is that the walls were patched rather that re-plastered as a whole. Generally they are reasonably flat but below the recent paint are variations in plaster type and previous wall paint. The new emulsion blistered locally and on areas of one wall it crazed badly (random cracks) with additional fine deeper cracks following what I assume are lines where different plaster abuts.

Clearly the right thing to do would be to strip off all the plaster and re-plaster, but we do not wish to face more major disruption. If it was not a bathroom I would line the walls.

Any constructive suggestions?

I would line the walls if the paint wasn't going to bubble up and use a good quality ready mixed adhesive to paste the lining with after you've prepped the walls.
If you go this way, make sure you give a good sandpaper/dust/sizing, to where the joints of the lining coincide, so's they wont split in the future.

Parts of my bathroom walls are lined and have kept good, for the past 9 years.

I've just discovered a similar problem with my new bathroom -and there I was thinking that I'd paid to have the whole upstairs replastered.

I can't find a definite solution so I shall keep an eye on this thread with interest.

Having a mixture of old and new plaster in my house I would say that lining paper seems to stick well to old plaster in bathrooms but not to new plaster. By old plaster I mean the white stuff that's a bit dusty but not actually flaking off. I had every problem known to man in my old bathroom - but the lining paper stayed on! Mind you I did stick several coats of eggshell over the top which probably helped.

I've also found that well sanded tetron works very well as a light skim over small problem areas - but I can't guarantee results.

Im with 'the growl' here...

My first thoughts would be a good rubbing down..or up...and then line using a decent ready mixed adhesive (in other words...anything but mangers!)

line the walls ,

I have seen a multitude of bad peeling paint on plastered walls in bathrooms ,

Many thanks for the postings, I will line the walls.

Why is ready mixed paste better?

Size the walls with paste?

Alastair

You will only need to size the bare plaster bits on the wall..

Ready mixed paste is a differnt formulation..it isnt just power paste that has been mixed up for you.

I adheres really well to most surfaces but make sure you rub the walls down well anyway to provide a key.