Ensuring Smoothing Compound Will Adhere to Glossy Surface

This wall has a texture on it that will look bad under the new wallpaper, and it will also interfere with adhesion.  So the wall needs to be skim-coated / skim-floated to smooth it.  But the current paint on the wall is glossy, as you can see on the right side of the photo.  The smoothing compound is sticky stuff, but it (like many coatings) cannot be trusted to adhere to a shiny surface.  I say it’s like the toy Colorforms … the new material will kinda stick – but not really stick .
But if the surface is dull , or matt finish , the new coating will be able to grab ahold and adhere .
To make this wall surface dull , I’m rolling on a primer that will dry with a flat / matt finish . 

There are various primers out there that will adhere to a glossy surface and then dry flat.  But I’m using my trusty wallpaper primer , Roman Pro 977 Ultra Prime .  Yes, this is a wallpaper primer .  But it also checks all the boxes … it sticks to just about anything , it dries quickly, especially with a fan blowing on it, and it dries with a matt finish that wallpaper paste – and smoothing compound  – will adhere to.  At $70 or more per gallon , yes, this stuff is expensive .  But it works , it’s low odor ,  it’s already on my truck , and it saves having to carry around an assortment of of primers and materials.  

Here’s my smoothing compound.  Sheetrock brand Plus 3 joint compound used for working with drywall .  Note that quick-dry formulas , nor spackling compound , are not suitable and won’t hold up under wallpaper .  You can search here for my other posts to see more about the smoothing process for textured walls . 

Woeful Walls

The walls in this powder room have a sort of sad and even hopeless feel about them.
It’s hard to put my finger on exactly why.

The bottom edge where the wall meets the baseboard looks uneven and unstable, with and odd lip running along the top of the baseboard.

And a lot of it has to do with the dull color, and the thick layer of gummy latex paint. The gloss finish adds to the tacky look.
It also doesn’t help that there is a lot of lint and other stuff stuck in the paint, creating a gritty and uneven wall surface.
Oh, and the texture that was rolled on is irregular and icky.

There was a lot of globby stuff – caulk and some loose edges – along the edge of this vanity. I took a razor and putty knife and dug out what I could.
And note the ridge along the top of the baseboard. Can’t expect wallpaper to grab ahold and adhere to that.

Likewise there was a lot of caulk along the top of the vanity backsplash. I dug out what I could of that, too.
And finally I figured out what was causing a large part of the problem … The room had been wallpapered previously. So when it was decided to paint the room, instead of stripping off the paper as they should have, they just painted over it. To me, it looks like there are several layers of thick latex paint on top of the wallpaper.

Yep. Sure enough! Along the electrical outlet you can clearly see the old wallpaper under all this mess.
As you can see, the latex paint is not adhering tightly to the old wallpaper. The wallpaper looks like it could be vinyl … and not much sticks well to vinyl. Think Colorforms.
Stripping off all this paint and the wallpaper under it would make a HUGE mess. So, short of re-drywalling the whole room (and the rest of the house, which has the same treatment), there’s not much that can be done to ensure that the layers inside this wall are stable.
I dug out caulk and pulled off any loose areas. Then I skim-floated the whole room to create a new, smooth layer on top. I’ll post more when that process is finished and the new wallpaper is up.

Repair Job – Paper Not Sticking

This is a solid vinyl on a woven fabric backing, that had been up in the outer room (sink area – no shower) of a bathroom for 30 or so years. These areas had begun to come loose. Both were spots where the installer had overlapped the paper.

Vinyl wallpaper won’t stick to vinyl wallpaper, because the surface is too slick for it go get a grab onto. Think about Colorforms temporary-stick toy. It will kind of stick, but not for the long haul, and not if there is stress put on the area.

Because there are always areas that will need to be overlapped in a wallpaper job, chemists have come up with special adhesives that will allow wallpaper to stick to a glossy or plastic surface. It’s called “border paste” or “vinyl-over-vinyl.” I think the original installer did use VOV in these spots, but that it simply gave out over time.

The VOV I carry is pretty thin, so I knew it would not be strong enough to overcome the curl in the paper in the corner – first photo. I needed something with more immediate tack. So instead I used clear caulk, one of my secret weapons, making sure to wipe any residue off the surface of the paper.

In the second photo, for some reason, the original paperhanger had overlapped a 1″ wide section above the door. In addition, the pattern was not matched correctly. At first, I thought I would remove the short strip on the left and replace it with a new one – and the homeowner had about 20″ left of paper, with the proper match, so it could have been done that way. But there would have been a noticeable color difference between the new strip and the one that had been on the wall for 30 years. Plus, it would have used up every single inch of paper she had left over.

So instead I did a splice. Since the two papers were already overlapped, it was simply a matter of using a very sharp razor blade to cut through the two layers of paper, being careful not to to score the wall beneath, and then removing the unneeded pieces, pasting the parts that needed paste, and smoothing the whole thing back into place. It worked perfectly.

Except that the pattern did not match. Never fear – I pulled out my trusty graphite pencil and drew on some leaves and stems, to disguise the mismatch. I was prepared to use watercolor to paint on some green leaves, too, but it was unnecessary.

The repair looked great, and the homeowner still has her 20″ of left over paper, in case something else happens that needs a little repair work.