The wallpaper job from hell continues.
Feb. 1st, 2011 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icarusCalling all home repair people, full alert.
Remember that wallpaper job?
Yes, it's still going on.
Since S.'s grandmother came home unexpectedly, I couldn't spend the night there anymore. We were reduced to working on it when our schedules overlapped: he works 10-6ish, I work 3-9:30ish, so project work time shrank to 10pm-midnight.
My fall-bounce-bomp down the stairs delayed it further. Then I got a cold.
The ugly wallpaper came down over Christmas, revealing those horrifying Pepto-Bismol pink walls. It took two coats of primer (high quality Zinsser) to cover that pink. The walls had both coats of primer and were painted January 10th, done ...
... except for the crack down the wall we'd discovered behind the wall paper and the closet doors. That corner I mudded (I'm no expert at mudding), sanded, and primed.
Annnnd the primer cracked like lizard skin along the vertical part of the crack.
Huh.
I assumed I must not have let the mud dry (but 24 hours should have been enough...), talked to the guys at Home Depot, who'd never seen anything like it but thought my explanation was plausible. They told me I'd have to scrape it out and re-mud. I said, "Oh, god, I hope not."
I scraped and sanded the cracked primer and mud. With a sanding block it was total gorilla work.
Sanding hard, I leaned on the wall -- and broke the mud. After all that sanding, I was going to have to redo it.
Got sick, got injured, painted the closet doors to keep the project moving while I couldn't sand. Got snowed in.
Finally bought a palm sander and set to work on it this weekend. I stopped trying to have the work be perfect and asked S. (home renovator-in-training) to do the mudding of the part that broke. He put on waaaay too much, but hell, he sanded it.
Then he did the same thing. He leaned too hard on the wall on the upper portion, breaking the mud there. So that had to be remudded as well.
Sunday it was done. Sanded smooth. Ready to paint.
I primed it.
And the damned primer cracked like lizard skin again. The seam underneath it is smooth. It's just the primer cracked on top of it.
Pissed, I laid on coat after coat of primer (yes, I waited an hour between coats, no, I didn't sand between coats, not with that lizard skin problem). It cracked less. But it still cracked.
Home owners and painters ... any ideas? We're stumped. S.'s forums are stumped. The Home Depot guys are stumped.
Remember that wallpaper job?
Yes, it's still going on.
Since S.'s grandmother came home unexpectedly, I couldn't spend the night there anymore. We were reduced to working on it when our schedules overlapped: he works 10-6ish, I work 3-9:30ish, so project work time shrank to 10pm-midnight.
My fall-bounce-bomp down the stairs delayed it further. Then I got a cold.
The ugly wallpaper came down over Christmas, revealing those horrifying Pepto-Bismol pink walls. It took two coats of primer (high quality Zinsser) to cover that pink. The walls had both coats of primer and were painted January 10th, done ...
... except for the crack down the wall we'd discovered behind the wall paper and the closet doors. That corner I mudded (I'm no expert at mudding), sanded, and primed.
Annnnd the primer cracked like lizard skin along the vertical part of the crack.
Huh.
I assumed I must not have let the mud dry (but 24 hours should have been enough...), talked to the guys at Home Depot, who'd never seen anything like it but thought my explanation was plausible. They told me I'd have to scrape it out and re-mud. I said, "Oh, god, I hope not."
I scraped and sanded the cracked primer and mud. With a sanding block it was total gorilla work.
Sanding hard, I leaned on the wall -- and broke the mud. After all that sanding, I was going to have to redo it.
Got sick, got injured, painted the closet doors to keep the project moving while I couldn't sand. Got snowed in.
Finally bought a palm sander and set to work on it this weekend. I stopped trying to have the work be perfect and asked S. (home renovator-in-training) to do the mudding of the part that broke. He put on waaaay too much, but hell, he sanded it.
Then he did the same thing. He leaned too hard on the wall on the upper portion, breaking the mud there. So that had to be remudded as well.
Sunday it was done. Sanded smooth. Ready to paint.
I primed it.
And the damned primer cracked like lizard skin again. The seam underneath it is smooth. It's just the primer cracked on top of it.
Pissed, I laid on coat after coat of primer (yes, I waited an hour between coats, no, I didn't sand between coats, not with that lizard skin problem). It cracked less. But it still cracked.
Home owners and painters ... any ideas? We're stumped. S.'s forums are stumped. The Home Depot guys are stumped.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-01 06:43 pm (UTC)Good point about the screen.
no subject
Date: 2011-02-17 10:16 am (UTC)Get the good spackle, and apply in very thin layers, one at a time. Wait 24-48 hours in between each application, sanding each time. You'll probably want 4-5 layers, or however many it takes to make the crack disappear. Wait 48-72 hours after the final application, sand, prime, and paint. Should work that way!
(Sorry for the late reply!)
no subject
Date: 2011-02-17 10:34 am (UTC)I'd forgotten to ask Decorator!mom (she does have a cape). She came up with a fabric sticky tape with feathered edges. (Link coming.)
We cut it to fit and found "feathered" didn't mean "tapered." But I slathered on two layers of primer, sanded it, put on another layer of primer, sanded that, and then a final coat, sanded.
The wall looks pretty good, and the tape covered all the places where the primer had cracked before.
Whew. At long last.
At first she thought I might have put the wrong type of primer with the wrong type of spackle. But I hadn't. She concluded that the wall probably had moisture or cold from a crack to the exterior wall. (This corner is towards the exterior.) "Houses get cracks," she says. We're warned that it'll probably come back, too.
Does this mean that S. is back in his quarters? Why, no. He wants to do a thorough cleanup and that means we need to fix the Dyson. *laughs softly*
no subject
Date: 2011-02-17 10:39 am (UTC)Short cut to fixing cracks. It works.
Date: 2011-02-17 10:53 am (UTC)www.site.stepsavers.com
This and four layers of primer should do it.
Plaster over fiberboard, huh? That's interesting. Usually it's either drywall or plaster over lathe. That latter was what our old house had. I'll mention it to her, see if she's ever heard of such a thing.
She's doing a talk in March sometime if you and the missus are interested.
Re: Short cut to fixing cracks. It works.
Date: 2011-02-17 10:56 am (UTC)And sure, toss me the info and I'll see if we're free/interested!
Re: Short cut to fixing cracks. It works.
Date: 2011-02-17 11:26 am (UTC)Re: Short cut to fixing cracks. It works.
Date: 2011-02-17 07:21 pm (UTC)Re: Short cut to fixing cracks. It works.
Date: 2011-03-07 05:03 pm (UTC)Re: Short cut to fixing cracks. It works.
Date: 2011-03-07 05:06 pm (UTC)Re: Short cut to fixing cracks. It works.
Date: 2011-03-08 01:01 am (UTC)