Oh wood chip how I loathe thee...

[ClosetMermaid]

Its all over the house. Its on the walls, on the ceilings, in the frontroom, hallways, bedrooms and spare room. Its not in the kitchen (thank heavens) and not in the bathroom - but only because we ripped off terracotta coloured patterned floral blown wallpaper of doom last autumn.

I really want it gone. I hate it with a passion, but i'm told that underneath it the walls have uneven surfaces, and thus would need a mountain of work to get nice smooth walls? I'm sorry that there are few details, but I guess I'd just really like to know what options i have to improve things, if there are any!

If it were up to you, what would you do? Do i bite the bullet and tear it all down room by room and work on it, and if so, where does one start evaluating such a project? Or is there a way of making it look any better? At the moment its even got glossy paint on it so to make matters worse its shiny and catches dust.

I can provide photos of different room if needed, but if more information is needed please let me know and I'll endevour to investigate!

 

[mattylad]

we dont need photo's of woodchip - we all hate it as much - lol
(que someone saying "but I quite like it" ).

Removing it will take hours of scraping, I would suggest a good steam stripper is certainly needed.

Re covering up the feature bumps of the walls, then that equally horrible blown/anaglypter type wallpaper does that well too.
I too had the "terracotta wallaper of doom", still do in certain parts of the house (circa 1855) but its holding the plaster on the walls at the mo so I'm leaving it there.

If you want the walls to be flat etc then they are likely going to need the lumps removing, replastering & skimming etc.
Or being boarded with plasterboard - but you loose a few inches on room size.

I have similar walls, I removed the big lumps as these were generally where the plaster has come un attached to the wall, put new backing plaster in & re skimmed the entire wall.
Then 2 weeks later I sanded them all down with a power sander to remove all my small lumps & bumps (I'm no plasterer ).

Are you sure you cannot persuade your chap to do stuff?
women have ways of making us get off our arses to do stuff.

 

[ClosetMermaid]

Blimey yes thats as much work as I anticipated it probably would be >.< I hoped someone might say "actually theres this new miracle stuff on the market that can makes it all evaporate and boof its done". Alas, nevermind.

Hes spent 28 years living here so far not bothered about how it looks, i daresay any consolation I offer won't have any effect!

I guess i starts somewhere small/less significant like the spare room and see if i can handle it myself or see if he joins in.

So with this is mind, how does one start setting up for the job? Tools, things to bare in mind, tips, etc.