Best treatment for old walls?

[EmilyRoss]

Hello! We are renovating an old house with cement walls. They are painted with oil paint and have been drilled for new electricity.

Now we need to finish them off. Our builder has suggested filling and grinding the entire wall surface then applying wallpaper and painting – but we're looking at 200 square-metres so it's very expensive.

Is there another option here? Does the entire wall really need to be grinded? We want the walls to be tidy but they don't have to be perfect.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[Notch7]

With hard graft it’s possible to wash with sugar soap, sand walls to get a key, fill holes with easi fill then sand and finally seal wall with something like Zinsser Gardz

 

[EmilyRoss]

Thanks Notch7 - so Zinsser Gardz can go over oil paint?

 

[opps]

You don't need to "grind" the walls in order to apply lining paper. You can apply lining paper over glass if you wanted to.

I too would recommend the lining paper option. It will give you a better quality of finish and is a low cost product that is (relatively) quick to apply.

200 sq metres is the equivalent of 2 rooms that are 5m by 5m (2m tall). That is about 2 days in labour for the lining paper and about £120 in materials.

 

[oldbutnotdead]

What hooligan sliced through that cornice? Yes it's harder work going behind but totally worth the effort to not destroy the thing. And how are you hiding the cables above the cornice that haven't been chased in?