Four Steps to Remove Textured Walls in Your Home

Remove Textured Walls

Back in the day, it was considered cost-effective for indoor walls to be covered with some kind of plaster. Textured interior walls most often have a practical function, since the texture hides the signs of drywall installation—that is, the taped seams where the sheets of drywall meet—and other imperfections. Because of its easy application, you would often find textured walls in commercial buildings. The textured look was quite popular in the 1960s and 1970s, but as time passed, the plaster crack and crumble, making its maintenance more expensive than its initial application.

Removing textured coating from your walls is not easy and it’s highly recommended that you hire a professional painter in New Jersey that has the right expertise. There are many steps to consider with removing any kind of plaster and it should be left to a professional.

Step #1: SANDING
The plaster needs to be sanded down and smoothed out and filled in with a joint compound – called skim coating. This technique works on every type of textured surface, including popcorn ceilings. There are other ways to smooth out a plastered wall – spray water on the surface to loosen the texture so it can be scraped off. This will create a huge cleanup and could also ruin the smooth surface of the wall.

Step #2: CLEANING
Whatever dust that falls from all the sanding in step one will need to be cleaned up. The walls should be wiped down with a damp cloth. Typically, a textured application is sprayed on and depending on what size of mess you’re dealing with, you may want to do two rounds of cleaning.

Step #3: APPLY A SKIM COAT
When drywall is installed, the fasteners and taped seams are skim coated—covered with a thin coat of joint compound, or “mud,” to level the surface in preparation for painting or papering. The same technique remove textured walls. A thin coat of mud is applied over the entire wall surface, allowed to dry, and then sanded smooth. Skim coating a whole room is both messy and time-consuming. The job is perhaps best left to a professional who has the experience to help avoid a dust storm in your home. Once the repaired surface is smooth, it can be sealed with a primer and then painted or wallpapered, as desired.

Step #4: INSTALL DRYWALL
If the walls have sustained water damage or are showing significant cracks, it might just be easier to cover the surface of the wall with ¼-inch drywall. This could be less expensive than skim coating the whole room, but installing new drywall also means skim-coating to cover the seams and get a smooth surface.

At Canabe, we care about our customers and we’ve got the experience needed to get your next paint job done in a quality way. Contact us today for a free estimate on helping you remove textured walls in your home. Our expert painters will be glad to answer your questions.