I Hate Wall Prep (MMR1)

I HATE wall prep. Let me say this again....I HATE WALL PREP. I'm not sure if it's because the actual task is just boring and tedious, or if it's because we have been working on 4 rooms and a hallway all at once and are now in the middle of preparing all of the walls for primer and paint. The first coat of spackle doesn't get to me, and is actually fairly rewarding despite all of the inside corners.

At first I was using the good 'ol fashion plain paper tape for all of the seems, including inside corners. The use of Bon Tool Sure Corner Drywall Joint Tape has made inside corner frustrations a thing of the past. The two metal strips that run down the center of the tape maintain a straight seem and prevent the tape from pulling out of the corners too much. This has been a critical element in maintaining my ever shortening patience during the joint taping that we've done.

Once the initial coat is down and dry, I don't even mind the second coat, third coat, or the sanding. The thing that has been killing me is preparing the walls that aren't new drywall. Since our house was built in the 50's, the walls are old school sheet rock (i think the sheets are 8 feet long and maybe 16-24 inches wide) with rough and skim coats of plaster over top. These walls are actually pretty nice...at least where the builders did a good job of making sure the numerous seems were hidden. However, it looks like there was either a primer applied to the plaster, or a few coats of paint, and then at least one layer of wall paper. Simple enough to remove, right? Wrong. Over time, the first layer has begun to separate from the plaster in some places, and still holds tight in others. Trying to scrape this stuff off has been a long and arduous process, and was followed by washing all of the walls down with the water and vinegar solution (that I mentioned in a previous post) to remove any remaining wallpaper glue.

Inherently, there are areas of the walls where we gouged the crap out of the plaster. This past weekend, we decided it was time for our own skim coat so we can put an end to the bedroom remodel. Now we have to sand all of the walls down, prime, and check for any spots that we missed. I've found that once you get the first coat of primer or paint on the walls, if there is a spot on the wall that needs additional attention it will rear it's ugly head at this stage.

...I hate wall prep...