How to prepare the walls for wallpapering: remove the old finish
No matter how the walls were decorated before, it is necessary to remove the old finish before a new cosmetic repair.
Please note! The exception is a smooth wall, covered with acrylic or water-based paint thin layer and without fixing glossy coatings.
Remove old wallpaper from the walls
Old wallpaper should be soaked with warm water( use a soap solution for greasy surfaces).
What is needed to remove old wallpaper from the walls:
- bucket or basin with warm water( soap solution);
- large sponge, brush or roller;
- atomizer;
- spatula or trowel;
- stepladder.
Procedure:
- Wallpaper must be watered in a convenient way for you. The easiest way to do this is by first walking along them with a moist roller, brush or sponge, and then periodically sprinkling with a spray gun. So the water will not run along the hands and walls, and the wetting will be uniform.
- Using a spatula, trowel the sheets and remove them from the walls, trying to tear off the entire sheet at once. If the wallpaper is torn and loose, then do not get soaked up completely - go back to step 1.
- Remove the remnants of the soaked wallpaper from the walls with a damp sponge and trowel.
Please note! If the old wallpaper is stratified into a decorative layer and plain paper, it is more likely that this layer is a substrate. Manufacturers assumed that it will serve as an excellent basis for new wallpapers. If you are satisfied with the quality of the walls, then you do not need to remove the substrate, you can immediately glue new wallpapers on top.
We remove the whitewash from the walls
It's impossible to glue the wallpaper to whitewashing categorically, no matter how much we want to avoid the dirty and unpleasant procedure for washing the whitewash. As soon as the wallpaper has dried, they will immediately fall behind the walls.
There are several ways to wash the whitewash off the walls. The most popular is to blur it until you reach the concrete. But you can use a cleaner method - soak the whitewash with the paste and remove it with one glued layer, when the adhesive composition already grabs, but it does not harden.
Please note! When the cover is removed, it's time to estimate whether you have enough outlets, whether they are located conveniently and whether you want to transfer the switch. At this stage, it is easiest to adapt the electro-communications.
Evaluation of wall conditions and elimination of serious defects
After the old finish was removed from the surface, you can evaluate the quality of the walls.
- How smooth are they?
- Are there cracks and holes?
- Does plaster fall off?
- Is there a fungus or other suspicious stains?
Curved walls can be leveled with plaster or plasterboard. How to do it, you can look at the video segments.
Cracks and holes are embedded in different ways depending on their size. For serious cracks( almost through the walls), metal tightening structures should be used, and after plastering. This process is complex, time-consuming and requires significant experience.
Smaller holes can be sealed:
- impregnated with liquid cement rags + plaster;
- with small pebbles, gravel + cement + plaster;
- mounting foam + plaster.
Small defects can be corrected by coating them with alabaster, plastering or plastering the surface of the walls.
If the old plaster falls off pieces, do not try to "grease" it, in the hope that it "will stand still for a hundred years".All unreliable areas need to be beaten and plastered again.
If parasites or fungus were found, treatment with a special antiseptic primer of all walls is mandatory. In the case of normal undamaged surfaces, this is done at will, although unnecessary will not be clear.
Leveling surfaces before wallpapering
wallpaper. Regardless of whether there were defects on the walls or not, most buildings were made without technology. Because of this, the plaster is heavily granular, and the old plaster is often far from ideal. Add unevenness and carelessly masqueraded fences from communications.
Hope that thick modern wallpaper will hide these imperfections, not worth it. If the new finish does not succeed, you will have to live at least a few more years in a house where wall defects are evident.
Putty perfectly copes with the task of leveling the walls. With obvious drawbacks, use the start + finishing filler, if they are barely noticeable, it will be enough finish. You can get acquainted with the technology of puttying on the video.
Substrates under the wallpaper
The function that used to be performed with varying success by old newspapers, now falls "on the shoulders" of modern backgrounds under the wallpaper. It is worth noting that they are offered a great variety depending on the functional task. The substrate under the wallpaper can:
- hide the small imperfections of the walls;
- to insulate the house;
- vapor-insulated room;
- increase adhesiveness of wallpaper glue;
- protect the walls from parasites.
There are simple thin paper substrates for walls, and there are three layers. The second consists of foamed polymer for heat and vapor insulation and thick paper framing the heater. There are special materials consisting of dense, antiseptic-saturated paper. And those, and others, and others are sold in rolls, as well as conventional wallpaper. In most cases, instructions for the use of wallpaper wallpaper is written on the packaging.
