I am in the middle of trying to fix my dining room walls before I paint. I should mention that our entire house is covered in wallpaper. And when I say the entire house, I mean the walls AND the ceilings. It’s in every room, and even in the closets. The people who lived here before us had painted over the wallpaper. I didn’t notice the wallpaper seams until the day we moved in. It was a real bummer. I was 20 weeks pregnant at the time, and I wasn’t even willing to entertain the idea of removing it. Sooooo, we just painted over it too. Ugh. And here we are 15 years later.
Knowing the wallpaper has been painted numerous times (and to add insult to injury, we now have 5 children underfoot), I am still not willing to entertain the idea of removing it. Since the wallpaper in our dining room is well adhered to the walls, I decided to sand down the seams to make them less noticable. It was a messy job. And, of course, my palm sander stopped working halfway through the project. I have the worst luck.
After finally sanding down the seams, I spackled over the lines and repaired a million popped nails, nicks, and gouges. It was a monumental task. Honestly, I probably should have just removed the damn wallpaper. The amount of work it took to prep the walls was ridiculous.
After hand sanding all the spackle (my shoulder still aches), I primed the walls. I was initially just going to spot prime, but I had to make so many repairs, it made more sense to just prime everything.
Last night I painted all the trim. Today I am going to start painting the walls. I am excited to see the new colors in the space!