Hi Arfcom DIY...

My wife and I bought our current house about a year ago.  The previous homeowners had a pretty horrid paint scheme and I've slowly been working to fix that.  As part of our long-term plan, we'd like to repaint the mater bathroom, but unfortunately they painted it with a textured paint.  Imagine a light blue color paint with the consistency of dull 40-grit sandpaper.

They also did a pretty crappy job of painting -- no tape so the lines aren't straight, only 1 coat, no attempt to completely hid the prior color underneath so you can see slight red showing through the blue in some areas...they got paint on the tile in some places, they didn't remove the toilet to paint behind it so you can see red...you get the idea.  


Any ideas how I can smooth out this gritty paint without spending a ridiculous amount of time or money?  Belt sander?  Orbital sander?  Replace drywall?  Just paint over it and deal with the texture?

I'm presently in the middle of similar issues with previous owners and their designers. Just for giggles here's a pic of the stairwell where the edward scissorhands played. Anyway to your question one of the rooms was done in some sort of bmx style. They dipped the bmx tires in paint and, well check the pics. Every knobby pattern sits proud of the finish texture of the wall. The only way I find to fix it before paint is sand with the vibrating sander. It's a mess and I'm burning thru a shit pile of sandpaper but you gotta break some eggs to make an omelet.

I have to get rid of the patterns because they will definitely show thru. You have to determine if the texture is offensive enough to remove / fill it, or paint over it knowing paint will not hide texture. If you're painting with any kind of gloss you might as well shine a spot light on it and say look at me.

Good luck.

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Wow.
 

Wow, that's hideous.

I understand the "edwards scissorhands" look, except in my case, it was nail-pops.  In one of the rooms I was painting, I fixed something like 40-50 nail pops (plus nail holes for paintings and such).  Yes, in one room.

Thanks for the info.

I was trying to think of ways of dealing with this.  

1.  Remove the textured paint with a heat gun and a scraper.

2.  Plaster over the texturized paint with a skim coat of joint compound or plaster of paris (or some other compound which other here may know of).

3.  Remove and replace the drywall.  

4.  Lay new drywall over the entire wall surface.

I would wet it down and hope it scrapes off. You could also try peeling it, you are praying for poor to no prep work from the original painters. If that fails, it's demo time. Drywall is cheap, the hard part is the seams. There are plenty of tutorials online to guide you through it, or you could sub out the finish work. When demoing always score the at the ceiling, unless you want to do the ceiling too. If you're up for a minimal amount of sanding leave 4-5" of drywall down from the ceiling, that way you're not  trying to make a joint with the existing ceiling texture. If you run it all the way up, you could always just put in crown and not do the ceiling joint. Nobody will know unless they pull down the crown.

Thanks for the info.  I might try sanding/scraping first, since I have zero experience putting up new drywall, and this would be a complicated job.  2 doorframes (entry door + closet door), a tub, a shower, a large vanity, and two windows.  Lots of tiny spaces in-between the frames and the corners of the room (meaning 2-3" strips of drywall between the frame and the corner of the room).

At the moment this project is on an indefinite hold, since I still have plenty of stuff elsewhere in the house to paint.  I think this room will be last on the list.



Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.  I've pulled off some of the original paint in the house (all the way down to the drywall, as best I can tell) by pulling up painter's tape while painting other rooms. I'm assuming they didn't use any kind of primer. Cheap mid-90s construction. Damn house isn't even 100% square, either…probably framed by 15-year old illegal Mexicans.

The way you do those little strips around doors is to put up the drywall blocking the door in, then taking your drywall saw and rotozip bit and cut out the door opening. There is a little bit you can buy to attach to your screwgun to prevent the screws from going in as well. Harbor freight sells a drywall saw that works decent for DIY job. Putting up the boards is the easy part really. Taping and smoothing the joint compound is the difficult part until you get the hang of it. Then you'll probably want to put a texture on your self, choose wisely.

I'd just try sanding the bitch and filling in anything deep. That's what I've been doing.

I wish my former owners hadn't used painters tape. Because they actually left that shit on too long and it tore when they took it off so now I have painted over painters tape to deal with. Shit sucks. And they still got paint on the mouldings anyway.

See I LOVE painter's tape, mostly because I really like perfectly straight, razor-sharp lines between paint colors.  Just have to be smart enough to pull it up soon, or use the "delicate" stuff that is supposed to be good for 60 days.

In my case I hadn't had the tape on longer than a few days and it still pulled up the crappy original paint job.  Oh well, I'm painting over it anyway.