what you will find under your wallpaper

When removing wallpaper, you never know what you might find underneath. This is typically true of older houses but can also apply to newer houses.

I’ll use one of my jobs as a case study. The job was a spare bedroom, a simple remove old wallpaper, paint the ceiling and woodwork and then re-paper, but like the title of this post says, you never know ‘what you will find under your wallpaper’.

Removing Wallpaper

I removed the wallpaper top layer and soaked the under layer, all was going well and as expected. Then I removed the paper around the windows. These were not original windows and had been renewed with uPVC windows.

It was here that I found the broken away plasted that had left a deep hole. I have come across this problem many times so wasn’t surprised.

Luckily I always carry a fast setting filler so I could fill the deep hole to just below the surface, and finish of with a fine filler. This was done within half a day so I wasn’t help up, I then waited until the next day to hang the wallpaper and could complete the work on time at no extra cost.

As you never know what you may find under the old wallpaper, it is best to expect the unexpected, sometimes it maybe just lots of holes, other times it may involve blown plaster or loose render and plaster around replaced windows and doors.

You may be lucky and only find the dates of when the room was decorated over the years written on the wall, don’t forget to add yours!

Some recently completed painting and decorating work

I have decided to do a post about some of my recently completed work, these are only a selection of work I have done in the past couple of months. They include water damage repair, a wallpapering job and an emusioning job, coincidentally they are all bedrooms.

Water stain to ceiling and walls

The first job shown here was of a water stain to a ceiling and walls. The stain was treated and then the ceiling was painted with white emulsion, with the walls being painted a pink tone emulsion. The woodwork was painted in white satinwood and finally a feature wall was papered to complete the job.

Wallpaper in a bedroom

This job was a simple remove old wallpaper and border, paint the ceiling white and re-paper the walls with a floral patterned wallpaper. No woodwork was done.
I removed the old wallpaper and border, filled some small holes and cracks before painting the ceiling with white emulsion. Finally I hung the floral wallpaper to complete the job.

Painting in a bedroom

The third job I am showing you was a repaint in a bedroom. I started by filling some small holes, there wasn’t much filling to do as the ceiling and walls had been papered. I then painted the ceiling down to the picture rail with white emulsion, then I painted the picture rail before painting the walls in a green colour. The remaining woodwork was painted with white satinwood. The door and floor was not touched, although I had previously varnished them.

Recent listed building exterior job summer 2014

As the summer draws to a close I thought I would post about a recent job I have completed. The job was a 17th century Grade II listed building property in my local area. I viewed the property in mid April 2014 with the intent to do the job late summer.

The property required some repair work to woodwork but was also in need of two new windows, a box sash window on the front elevation and a small window to the side elevation. These windows were made by a local joinery company and fitted by a local builder.

The building is timber framed that originally had weatherboard on the exterior but was rendered some year ago. The roof has a catslide style, this means one side is longer than the other.

Decorating the exterior

The rendered walls had algae growing on them so the first job was to treat this with a algae and anti fungicide wash, this was applied, left for a while, and then thoroughly washed and scrubbed off.

Once the walls were dry I could apply the masonry paint, two coats were applied to the walls of a Dulux smooth masonry paint in Magnolia. Once this was done it was time to do the windows.

There were nine windows in all to paint, the frames were painted in Sadolin Superdec Walnut, and the windows themselves in Sadolin Superdec Magnolia, the front door was also painted in the same Walnut and magnolia.

The guttering and downpipes were painted in a black gloss, the plinth was painted in a black bitumen to finish off the bottom of the property.

The customers were very happy and as you can see by the pictures below, there is a big difference between the before and after shots.

The before and after pictures