Painting over bumpy wall

michelefauk

Hi
I hope someone can help. I' m about to paint my daughter's bedroom, but one of the walls is very rough and uneven. It looks like it may have had paper on it at one time, or paint which has come off taking bits of the wall with it! I was looking at buying a product like Polycell Smoothover but have been told it is rubbish and not worth the money. Can anyone come up with any suggestions? i am not Mrs DIY but will have a go at most straightforward jobs.

misgrace

When you say bumpy wall, do you mean there is lumps and bumps in it, or do you mean the wall has got what I call 'nibs', that when someone has painted over a wall that has been stripped and not rubbed down properly.

Dont buy the smoothover, I am a professional P&D, and I tried to use it once but I didnt get on with it. :eek:

You have two choices really, one is to get a strong scraper and scrape away the nibs, then get some rough sandpaper and sand like mad, and fill/make good where necessary.
Second choice, you can still sand/rub your walls down, and fill the worst of it, and line with heavy duty lining paper, either 1200 or 1400 grade, I always use the 1400, its fantastic stuff, and does hide a fair bit, but not everything.

if you go with the lining paper, make sure after you have pasted your length, soak it for at least 5-8 mins, and the beauty of lining paper is there is no wastage, and if you mess some of it up, there is little tricks to put it right.


If its big lumps and bumps, then your best bet might be to get it plastered.

Hope this helps.:D

michelefauk

Thanks for that. When i say bumpy, in some lights it looks ok, then in other light you can see where bits of the surface of the wall have come away in quite big pieces (4 inches or so) It looks a bit like the surface of the moon! I would say the depth of the bits that have come away are about 2 mm, in patches. Hope this makes sense!

ormus

i know the problem. there is no easy answer either. scrape it all off, or sand it off with a power sander. what a mess though.
or get a plasterer in. not cheap.

halfway house? line it with plasterboard?

ritesh

michelefauk wrote:

Hi
I hope someone can help. I' m about to paint my daughter's bedroom, but one of the walls is very rough and uneven. It looks like it may have had paper on it at one time, or paint which has come off taking bits of the wall with it! I was looking at buying a product like Polycell Smoothover but have been told it is rubbish and not worth the money. Can anyone come up with any suggestions? i am not Mrs DIY but will have a go at most straightforward jobs.

Hi michelefauk

We had a similar problem in our house. For two of the bedrooms (4 bedroom house) we spent a lot of time and effort scraping it down and sanding the plaster. After wiping the walls down we made good as many of the imperfections we could find. Finally, we painted the walls with watered down emulsion paint which highlighted the remainder of the imperfections. Once those had been made good we were ready for two coats of paint.

Result, perfect walls that took 4 days :-))

However, the remainder of the house we skimmed with new plaster.

louise_1981

Sorry to hijack this but a quick question.

We have just taken down polystyrene tiles from the ceiling in three bedrooms. The resulting surface is not worth painting. What are the options?

misgrace

ritesh wrote:

Hi michelefauk

. Finally, we painted the walls with watered down emulsion paint which highlighted the remainder of the imperfections. Once those had been made good we were ready for two coats of paint.

Result, perfect walls that took 4 days :-))

Well done I am not suprised the walls are perfect as speaking from a professional P&D point of view, you have done it the right way.:T

across

yep we had the same problem in our kitchen and sanded it down too it looks a lot better than it was althougth still not perfect but i dont notice it anymore so it must be good enough! good luck!

navig8r

Well I have seen lots of negative comments on smooth over but used as a filler for the low points I have found it to be excellent..It sands down easily and the dust is courser so it does not clog the sand paper it falls downwards instead of floating every where..Another excellent filler is Polycell finishing skim polyfilla.

Huh! I edited this last night but the site was at a stand still and did not work!!

So ,Edit :I should add,the latter does take longer to go off but it can be sprayed with water and the surface can be softened and re smoothed to a good finish.

Dave

JennyW_2

michelefauk wrote:

Hi
I hope someone can help. I' m about to paint my daughter's bedroom, but one of the walls is very rough and uneven. It looks like it may have had paper on it at one time, or paint which has come off taking bits of the wall with it! I was looking at buying a product like Polycell Smoothover but have been told it is rubbish and not worth the money. Can anyone come up with any suggestions? i am not Mrs DIY but will have a go at most straightforward jobs.

we've got this problem in our bedroom on one wall and it's very noticeable at night when we had the lamp on - it's crap really. I'm going to use a powerful sander to smooth it down best I can, if this doesn't work then we'll probably have to get the wall skimmed

JennyW_2

louise_1981 wrote:

Sorry to hijack this but a quick question.

We have just taken down polystyrene tiles from the ceiling in three bedrooms. The resulting surface is not worth painting. What are the options?

if you want perfect smooth ceilings then you'll have to get them plastered. All the ceilings in our flat were wallpapered - we removed it and had them all plastered. Much more desirable