Venetian Plaster – Whoever Thought This Was A Good Idea?!

In the early 2000’s, someone got the idea to put Venetian plaster in American homes. The fad caught on, and soon people were forsaking wallpaper and covering their walls with the new trendy texture, which was supposed to look “rustic,” and “Tuscan.”

To me, unless you had a house that was designed from the ground up to look “Tuscan,” this wall finish never looked good in the typical American home. Even worse was when the finish was poorly executed. Please see the photos.

I’m glad that the pendulum has swung, and people are going back to wallpaper.

There are special prep steps that must be taken, so that the texture won’t show under the new paper, and so the paper can adhere to the surface (true Venetian plaster has a slick wax coating).

Don’t Mark The Walls With Ink

Digital Image

The two holes in the wall are from picture hooks. See the little “X” under the holes? That’s from whoever was hanging the hooks. He was measuring and marking the wall, so he would know where to hammer in the nails for the hooks.

The only problem is that he used a ball point ink pen to make his marks. Ink is bad because, diminutive as this “X” is, it will bleed through wallpaper. It will bleed through paint and other materials, too.

Other substances that can bleed through wallpaper include water stains, oil, grease, wax (crayon), tar / tobacco, blood, rust, and more.

There are special stain-blocking sealers that can be used to cover these types of marks. KILZ Original is one that I like, and BIN is another.

Since this was tiny, and since I was skim-floating the wall to smooth it anyway, I just used a putty knife to dig the mark out of the wall. Gone! That way I don’t have to worry if a stain blocker will do its job sufficiently. Then I skimmed over the gouge with joint compound to smooth the surface.