Smoothing Suburban Heavily Textured Walls

In the tract homes in new subdivision developments all around Houston, it’s very common that the builder will use a heavy wall texture like this. You can’t hang wallpaper on this, because the bumps and dips will look horrible under the paper, and also they will impede good adhesion.

So the walls will need to be smoothed. This is accomplished by “skim-floating” or “skim-coating” the walls with joint compound. I do my own prep. And, as I like to say, I’m better at it than any “guy” you can hire. 🙂

The third photo shows the wall with half in original condition, and half with the smoothing compound applied over it.

Some people use a wide taping knife to spread the “mud,” as we call it. But I prefer the trowel shown in the fourth photo, because I am closer to it and can see everything that I am doing, and also I feel the position of the handle gives me better manual control.

Sometimes, using fans and playing with the A/C or heat systems, the compound will dry in a couple of hours. But with texture this heavy, the material must be left to dry overnight.

Tomorrow morning, I will sand the walls smooth, vacuum up the dust, wipe residual dust off the wall with a damp sponge, and then roll on a primer. Once that dries (again, call in the fans!), the wallpaper can go up. The second-to-last photo shows it finished and ready for wallpaper.

The last photo shows the brand I prefer, USG’s Sheetrock brand “Plus 3,” which you can find at most big box stores and most paint stores. It sands a lot more easily than the standard joint compound in the red, white, and green box.

Smoothing a Textured Wall

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The wall texture you see by the light switch is pretty typical of new homes in the Katy suburb of Houston, and actually a little lighter than many builders use. These bumps would show under the new wallpaper, and also cause potential problems with adhesion at the seams, so I had to smooth the surface. To do that, I trowel on joint compound, which we just call “mud,” and which is something like plaster. The process is called “floating,” or “skim coating.”

It takes a while to dry, which can be sped up by using fans, and also by having the air conditioning or heat, plus the house fan, cranked up in the house to pull humidity from the air. Sometimes it needs overnight to dry completely. A heat gun is the final encouragement for stubborn spots. In the second photo, the mud has been applied and dried, and is waiting to be sanded.

The dust from sanding is like fine flour, and drifts onto everything, so it’s important to take steps to keep it off the homeowner’s furnishings – and out of the smoke detector!

I use an abrasive flexible sponge (not shown) to do the sanding by hand, and it goes pretty quickly. Once the sanding is done, the walls (and floor!) need to be vacuumed, and then the walls get wiped down with a damp sponge, to remove any remaining dust. This is a crucial step, because anything (wallpaper, paint, decals) applied over a dusty wall will delaminate and fall right off.

Once the walls are dry again, a primer is applied. When I have newly floated walls, which are porous, I like to prime with Gardz, a thin sealer that soaks into the surface and dries hard and intact. Gardz dries clear, which is why, in the fifth photo, the wall is smooth but you still see some of the paint from the wall underneath.

The last shot shows the pretty new wallpaper, free of bumps or distractions, and with a solid surface to cling to.

This wallpaper is called “Watercolor Peony” and is by Anthropologie.

Soft-Toned Damask on a Tall Bedroom Accent Wall

I don’t get many opportunities to pull out my 16′ extension ladder, but this week I did … the ceilings in this master bedroom were 12′ high! – just a few inches further than I could reach using my 6′ ladder. The first two photos were taken yesterday, as I was “floating” or “skim coating” the wall, to smooth it so the texture would not show through the wallpaper. The whiter areas you see have the plaster-like substance applied, as I work my way from top to bottom, from left to right.

Because of the dark paint on the other walls, I stopped the white “mud” just a hair away from the corner. In the second photo, that is my floating trowel hanging from the brace of the ladder. I floated the wall yesterday, and let it dry overnight. Today I sanded, vacuumed, wiped dust off the wall with a damp sponge, primed, and then finally hung the wallpaper.

I started in the middle (third photo), so I could center the damask motif on the wall, which will look nice once the homeowners get their bed and headboard back in place. The plastic is on my ladder to keep wallpaper paste from slopping all over it. I don’t have to do this with a normal step ladder, but extension ladders require a different angle of approach, and I couldn’t avoid having the pasted paper unbook and flop against my ladder. Yuck.

Fourth photo just shows some of the mechanics of how all this happens. The next pics are shots of the pattern; really pretty, soft, and nicely suited for a bedroom. They wanted a light color on the wallpaper, as it would contrast nicely with their brand new, very dark hardwood floors.

This wallpaper pattern is by Etten (by Seabrook), and is printed on the newish non-woven substrate, which is designed to peel off the wall easily and in one piece, when it’s time to redecorate. Note that, since these papers are generally thick and somewhat puffy, you often see the seams just a little (last two photos).

The room was a master bedroom in a fairly new home, and the location was Pearland, a suburb of Houston, Texas.