Whoops! Someone Painted Over Old Wallpaper

Just looking at the walls, I had not noticed . But when I removed the light switch cover, it was clear that someone didn’t bother to remove the old wallpaper, and just painted over it.

Actually, they probably did do some prep, because you could not see seams under the paint. They must have taken steps to cover the seams.

And there was no flashing … difference in texture between paint over wallpaper, for instance, and paint over smoothing compound that was used to disguise those seams.

And there were no bubbles (caused by latex paint on top of wallpaper that absorbs moisture from the paint and swells) and only a few tiny loose areas.

Still, it would have been better if the previous guy had put some effort into removing the wallpaper, and then washing the paste off the wall and then sealing with a stain blocker, to prevent paste residue from causing the new paint to crackle and flake off the wall. Then the room would be adequately ready for paint.

Wallpaper in Midwest Living Magazine – Don’t Try This at Home!

While I’m happy to see another magazine promoting wallpaper in a decorating feature, I have to say that there is some abruptly alarming misinformation being passed along in the May/June 2017 issue of Midwest Living. In a story about revamping a home office (pg. 46), the homeowner strayed “from convention, saving time and money by painting directly over the grass-cloth wallpaper.”

Folks, this is a horrible thing to do! You might “save time and money” now, but when it comes time to get that mass of hardened painted fiber off the wall, you will have a dickens of a time, and most likely tear the wall to shreds in the process. $$ to get the wall repaired and intact again.

In addition, and more important for the immediate use, painted grasscloth just looks bad. As a solid color, it lacks the variations of shades that give the material its allure and appeal. Painted grasscloth, especially when painted with a flat finish paint, just looks dead.

Logistically, water-based latex paint is likely to cause the natural grasscloth fibers and its paper backing to absorb moisture and swell, creating bubbles in the material. These bubbles will not disappear when the paint dries. Any hairs or loose grass fibers will get caught in the paint, dry, and harden, usually sticking up at unsightly angles.

Whoops – Somebody Painted Over Old Wallpaper – And It’s Peeling Up

This wallpaper is in the potty room of a Hollywood bathroom in a newish home in Bellaire (Houston). Instead of stripping off the original wallpaper, someone decided to just paint over it.

It’s not clear if they painted over the inked, vinyl / acrylic – coated surface, or if they peeled off that surface coat and then painted over the remaining paper backing.

Not that it would make a lot of difference, but they probably did not prime or seal the surface, either.

Either way, as you can see, the various layers failed, and the wallpaper seam let go of the underlying surface, resulting in the “popped” seam you see in the photo.

This probably has to do with a lot of factors, including an improperly prepped surface (read above), latex paint adding moisture that could cause the underlying surface to expand and swell, and humidity from the shower and the window allowing moisture to enter the edges of the wallpaper.

Once humidity enters the edges of wallpaper, it can cause the paper to expand and then pull away from the underlying surface. This can result in curled seams.

This is what you see in the photo above.