Stripping woodchip

dander

I've always found steamers more trouble than they're worth. A good scraper, however, with the changeable knife-type blades - worth every penny.

Svenena

I made a start on this yesterday, and its going okay... most of the walls seem fine, and although it's messy, I'm finding with the steamer, it's not too difficult (although time-consuming!).

The next problem I've come up against is that I've discovered why the woodchip was used. On a small section of wall (underneath the window), there's an area about 1m square where there's been some solid white stuff smoothed over (although not very smooth), before being covered in woodchip. Is the white stuff likely to be some kind of polyfilla-type stuff? I accidentally chipped a bit off (it's a couple of mm thick) and underneath, the wall is pink (is this the plaster?? no idea what plaster looks like) and there's a very thin crack.

So how can I hide the crack? I could put polyfilla over it, but then it wouldn't look very smooth, and I want to paint it. Alternatively, I could use (smooth, not woodchippy) lining paper and paint over that, although I would just do this on the area under the window, as the other walls are fine. But the ideal would be if there was some other way to hide this thin crack. I would like to get all the white stuff off, as it's not very smooth at the moment. If I paint straight onto the pink stuff, maybe the paint would fill the crack as it's so fine anyway, and it wouldn't be noticeable?

Any ideas?

latecomer

The white stuff will almost certainly be filler. I'd remove any loose material and then refill it - sanding as required to get it flat. this should solve the problem with the crack at the same time.

Most cracks will not be hidden by normal paint.