Old Glasgow tenement. Currently covered in very poorly done wallpaper, with a very poor paintjob on top. Options are:

A – Strip, paper with lining paper (1 layer across, 1 layer vertical), paint.
B – Strip, repair/skim, paint on the plaster.

Plastering is more expensive but is supposed to provide the better finish, so I’m leaning towards it.

What say you?

have had similar – Edinburgh tenement and old Edinburgh house. Lining paper usually won – with either paint on top or wallpaper cover. Sometimes needed a plaster skim (walls had been artex’d, unbelievably)..

I moved into my first house 2 years ago, terrible walls everywhere,
A tight budget forced me down the lining paper route,
When all is finished and done with pictures on the wall, you don’t tend to notice,
If you do a bad job like I’ve done in the bedroom, you’ll notice and it’ll drive you crazy.

If I’d had the money, I would have reskimed the whole house! but I don’t and it’d be at the back of a very long list of things that need doing.

Re plaster – long term solution. Gives you the opportunity to re-wire at the same time.
Lining paper – good for holding dodgy plaster together, cheap, less mess than re plastering (its what I did to my house).

Hadn’t considered the re-wiring thing. Nothing major but there is a light switch I’d relocate given the chance.

I do want a long term solution. Something I don’t have to touch for a good long time. The quotes we’ve had put plastering at about 30% more expensive.

Long term, I would re-plaster. It’s what we are gradually doing as we re-decorate and yeah it gives you the chance to move sockets etc. at the same time.

We weren’t really intending to do the re-decorating like this as it does add quite a bit to the cost, but found that all the plaster was lifting anyway when stripping the wallpaper so it needed re-doing anyway.

I’ve gone for stripping all the paper and seeing where the old plaster comes-with and replastering only where necessary, lining the rest.

Will see how it turns out…

I’ve gone for stripping all the paper and seeing where the old plaster comes-with and replastering only where necessary, lining the rest.

I did that when we needed to tart up our old house to sell it. Imagine my delight when application of the steam stripper was accompanied by a loud cracking sound.

Yeah steam stripping in these old houses is a no-no. Luckily we only did the upper walls of an old cupboard before finding out. One of the decorators we had in said ‘Go and check it. I bet the paintwork is a mess.’ and he was dead right.

I’ve got nearly all the walls stripped now, but none re-papered yet (doing the whole house). It’s actually been mostly ok. Though if I paper the bedroom and decide it’s a massive PITA I reserve the right to give up and get the plasterer in 😉

Replaster or a skim for long term solution. That’s a painter and decorators advice.

wait til you steam strip the old lining paper to find it’s been applied with something akin to nicotine coloured tar… in the end we smoothed that as best we could, lining papered and papered on that..

Some of the walls in our house are not great and when we moved in we had to do some lining before decorating (we had to completely decorate and carpet a 5 bed farmhouse and had little spare cash).

13 years down the line I’m now stripping some walls/ceilings have having them skimmed as I now HATE lining paper.

Do it properly first time and you’ll not regret it.

Edit: If you get a decent plasterer there is very little mess … in fact none at all as our carpets testify.

Thanks for the advice so far. Mess not an issue as the carpet’s up already. Plasterer it is I think. The cost will sting a bit but sure I’ll be glad of it further down the line.

I’ve had most of our house re-skimmed. Very cheap as skimming a vaguely flat wall is the lightweight bit of plastering (compared with making tons of render and then skimming that).

wait til you steam strip the old lining paper to find it’s been applied with something akin to nicotine coloured tar… in the end we smoothed that as best we could, lining papered and papered on that..

Seen that last year when we renovated my other half’s place – it was horrendous, there was about 3 or 4 layers of mental 80’s / 70’s / 60’s paper – at least 2 of which were embossed & I swear between one of the layers was a neigh on impermeable 30 year old thick gloss paint… then the weird brown glue to finish it off… we initially were going to go the lining paper route but after literally weeks of scraping, the walls /ceilings were such a state that we opted for having pretty much everything plastered which, in hindsight was the right idea. We did have the walls & ceiling in one bedroom lined which looks perfect until you walk into the hall which was plastered, my mate’s a decorator & always uses the thickest lining paper possible leaving a 1/2mm gap between sheets hung horizontally & then fills the gap with a bit of polyfilla – can do it with your finger – can’t tell where the joins are if I tried.

Sounds like decorating. Something that spoiled my Xmas holiday.

Try and live with it as it is: cheaper, less hassle, ‘authentic’ looks.

Lining paper: cheapish, some hassle, fair results if done by an expert.

replaster: not cheap, loads of hassle, allows massive changes with lots of planning and more money (sockets, switches, cables (mains and LAN), excellent results with an expert, makes putting lining paper on really easy (for an expert).

We had everywhere skimmed after I got halfway round a room then decided that with 3m high ceilings that I couldn’t be arsed. We were getting rewired at the same time so made sense. Still got one room left to do as it got used as a dumping ground.

I lined my whole house after painstakingly scraping wallpaper and some fairly extensive patching. I wish I’d paid to get it skimmed for the effort it took, but I did find good lining paper laid horizontally made the joins almost unnoticeable, and I used left over plasterboard jointing compound to make good any noticeable joins. Fantastic stuff, easy to apply and can be sanded down easily so no worries about damaging the lining paper.