Monday, October 29, 2007

A Painting Fiasco.......saved!

A Painting Fiasco............saved by a spackling technique


A few years ago a very talented friend of mine called me in a complete panic. She had tried to remove wallpaper in her bathroom and by doing so, had ruined the wall. What she did not realize at the time is that whoever had put that wallpaper up, had never primed the wall first. What my friend had done was not only remove the wallpaper but pieces of the wall board underneath. It was a complete disaster and the wall appeared to be ruined.

This is not the first time I've heard a horror story like this. Many people have made this mistake before. So what to do? Well, short of hiring a professional to come in and re-spackle the entire room or replacing the wallboard you have to look for a way to fix it. What we did really worked well.

Get a bucket of spackle and a large spackle knife. Coat a 4X4 area of the wall with a thin coat of spackle. Now depending on what kind of texture you want, you will need to find a tool that will create that texture. Some examples are: a nail brush, comb or just a narrow spackle knife. What I did on my friend's wall was to use a spackle knife and move it back and forth making an X pattern. When it was finished it looked like a basket weave design. Work in 4 X 4 areas so the spackle does not dry before you can work your texture in. Let it dry for a day and then drag that wide spackle knife down from ceiling to floor to knock off any high areas or bumps. Then paint your room like just like you would any other room.

This technique is great for rooms that have damaged walls or even if you just want to have a texture. Just remember, if you do this to your walls you had better like them. Smoothing them out again will be messy and difficult (lots of sanding). For my friend's bathroom it was a life saver.

Here are pictures of the wall. Unfortunately they don't show that texture at all. The walls in the photo's look completely smooth, but they are not. They have a texture, as described above.







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