Stubborn paint

Removing the residue of the paint on the plaster walls.

The walls are not flat (that's 50 year old plaster for you), so both scraping and sanding takes much longer than it would otherwise. The plaster absorbs the heat from the heat gun, which means the paint is much harder to remove than it is from wood.

With the heat gun, followed by washing the green residue off the wall.

This patch (below the line, which is about 5 feet up) took about four hours.

This was after fixing the toilets yesterday, and I learned some things that might make it go faster in future: the angle of the scraper makes a huge difference for example, and the heat gun gradually gets more effective the longer it's on - it doesn't reach its highest temperature for several minutes it seems.

A (small) section of this was done with a blowtorch rather than the heat gun. (See what happens when I'm away? Walls are SET AFIRE. - S.) This is somewhat faster - the heat is more focused and direct and the paint just blisters off, but it does leave faint scorch marks on the plaster itself.

This is the opposite wall of the hallway, after about 1:45 hours with a power sander.

The sanded wall is considerably smoother, with some of the unevenness of the wall reduced. It produces a lot of dust however, even with the dust catcher attachment.

The little bit above the line, on the left near the corner, that looks green was done with the heat gun and scraper, to do a compare, that's what it looks like before washing off the green.

Given the thickness of some of the remaining paint, a thicker primer is not going to help.

Adding a surface skim of plaster would solve both the residue, the unevenness and the remaining pockmarks.

Motivation...or lack thereof

Here's a small section of wall in the entry way showing the stubborn remains of old paint that didn't come off with the latex layers. This section is mostly tan. There appear to be two layers - the tan layer (top) and a green layer (bottom). The green layer seems to be water soluble. When M was washing the walls, the sponge and wash water turned green...but there are still green bits on the walls, so it didn't all wash off.



This is what the walls in both hallways, the kitchen, the living room and the dining room (probably - we haven't stripped the latex paint off in there...YET) look like.

It's beginning to make sense why the POs put such an incredibly thick coating of paint over this and why some of it was 'artistically' (I use that word in the most generous way possible) mottled and textured. Because this old stuff? Does not come off unless you have superhuman patience, tenacity, and SKILLZ.

So we bought a heat gun (the cheapest one, erm), which is fantastic...on the trim. Not so the walls. I estimate the project to take months, if not years, using the heat gun (I can't tell if this is an exaggeration born of despair or not - it is truly that slow).

Other options are: chemicals, that heat thing that costs $400+ (given the large area that needs stripped, the latter might actually be cheaper), or slave labor.

...I opt for trying a thicker primer before exploring any of the above. (Ah, yes, contributing to the mess are the two layers of thin, low-VOC primer that I already put on one wall in the long hallway, which served no purpose except to prove that thin, low-VOC primer does no good in most of our house.)

Paint! (again)

What I was basically told when M bought this house was:

• Carpets are dirty and need to be torn up


• Needs new paint


• Yard not in great shape

Now, the carpet step has been completed. It was probably the most disgusting thing I've ever done (pictorial evidence available at my Flickr page). We're down to concrete (with some remaining mastic stuck to it). Fine, okay, it still smells but it can be dealt with.

But I'd expected to paint weeks ago. We've done tons of prep - wallpaper stripping, paint stripping, sanding, patching, cleaning... But only a single room reached the point of paint -- my room which is, after a layer of primer and two layers of paint, now a pale lilac.

The master bedroom has been primed twice and is ready for paint...but we were forced to move in before the house was ready, so now it's filled with furniture. At some point, when I'm capable of lifting anything (I hurt my back painting the ceiling in my room!), I'll move the furniture and paint.

The hallways, foyer, and living room were thought to be ready for painting, but the hallway has proved that this was a wishful, unrealistic thought. The layers of paint we stripped were latex. Underneath that is a more stubborn, flaky-not-peely paint. I don't know if it's an old oil-based paint, or if it's some kind of plaster specific coat. We thought it was sanded to the point that we could paint over it, but the unevenness is very, very obvious even through two coats of primer.

Apparently it's common practice in England to put up something called lining paper when painting over plaster that's previously been painted or wallpapered, but I haven't seen anything of the kind here. It would make a smooth surface, I suppose, but the idea seems kind of counterintuitive to me.

The other option is to get some kind of chemical paint stripper (I'm looking at Peel Away Smart Strip as a relatively non-toxic option) but the price, given the area we'd need it for, is daunting. Not quite as daunting as stripping yet another layer of paint off all of those walls again, though...