If you strip -- use the toxic stuff and good ventilation. "Green" stripper is not formulated to work well on paints from before WWII. By the time you've scraped enough to get the paint off, you've inhaled so much lead that you might as well have risked the toxic stripper and gotten the job done efficiently.

I agree with Maxwell about just buying new moulding. I have stripped paint before and it is just alot of hard work and sometimes it just doesn't look that great when it's done. You could find a trim carpenter to see what the cost would be. The cost in dollars might be a lot less than the cost in hours of your labor.

If you use toxic paint stripper, wear an OSHA-approved mask for gases (as opposed to dust). And adhere to the instruction not to re-brush areas where you've put down stripper, as it releases more toxins into the air. Yhe volatile compounds in those strippers are neurotoxic. In other words, they kill your brain cells.

Many years ago, I had a house with lath and plaster that was as bad as yours. I put a textured paint over it and worked the surface to get a stucco look. It worked, but the best solution is to take it all down and get sheetrock put in. It's one of the cheaper renos you can do. If I had it to do over again, I would have had the entire house sheetrocked.

In my old house, all the molding and trims were oak from pre-1920's, so it was worth stripping them. The molding you show in the photo is a common mill pattern, and could easily be replaced with new wood molding (or polystyrene if it's to be painted).

And as Wende said, there is going to be lead in those layers of paint. Be very, very careful, especially if there are young kids or a woman of childbearing age around.

I did this in my bedroom (see "Frank's Mid-century Madness" in the smallest coolest contest page) -- I used a heat gun to get the bulk of it off, then some Rock Miracle as suggested by Maxwell.

But honestly, usually the wood quality doesn't justify this level of work (I did in in the Living room, too, but ended up repainting anyways.)

Molding is rarely (if ever) made using quality wood. If you are having a contractor smooth out your walls, have him install new molding -- the result will be much better than trying to recycle the old molding. Quite frankly, you will find that a lot of the plaster beneath the molding is deteriorated. Completely refinishing the plaster will seal up you walls, which is a good thing!!!

Also, not usually necessary to remove plaster -- a contractor can use 1/4 inch sheetrock over the old walls.

Agree that drywall is the way to go. A lot easier than replastering.

The dilemma with drywall is how to handle any existing sticky-outy features that you want to keep. You may also have to change the depth of your moldings to make things look normal.

I'm not saying DON'T just put up drywall -- I'm saying think through the process. This solution had been used by a prior owner of our former house in upstate NY, with weird results.

Are you sure these are wood and not plaster moldings? I can't tell for sure from the picture.

We recently moved into a new place and my walls look just like yours. But the moldings are plaster -- which is gonna be a headache.

I third the recommendation for a toxic stripper. The green ones you leave on for a couple of days don't like hot days either. I tried one and it just dried on top of the paint I was trying to strip, causing an even bigger mess/problem.

A contractor specializing in your choice of plaster or drywall redo is worth his weight in gold. Not so much for putting it up - that's the easy part. It's the matching of the texture of the wall he's trying to match that's the art.

I have restored houses for years, and I have done my own stripping and painting for nine years. I suggest a product called LIQUID SANDPAPER. It is not toxic at all. I use an inch wide paint brush to paint the goo onto the trim. Wait and hour and wipe off. Repeat until you are satisfied. Be sure to get the heavy duty blue paper towels contractors us for wiping off the paint, and get fine sandpaper for edges and corners. Be careful with the sandpaper. A little pressure goes a long way. By wiping the paint, it "levels the finish" as well. I recently stripped wood I thought was plain, and I uncovered nine details in 3 1/2 inches. I get my supplies at Home Depot.

Not to bandwagon, but …

You’re insane if you think you’re going to strip all your molding properly. Even an 100sqft room it’d take you an entire day if you know what you’re doing. Especially if the moldings are as damaged as your picture of your crown molding and words would imply.

Remember, stripping is only the first step of molding repairs, you’ll also have to finish them with compound, sanding, and then paint.

Buy new moldings, their fairly inexpensive, cheap to install and if you can find a good woodworker in your area he’ll appreciate the business.

I agree stripping is a lot of hard work, but there are a lot of short cuts. Restored woodwork will always be worth more than new. And the old is much thicker and heavier.

TRIM Instead of going back to the wood, remove enough paint to make it look like one coat of paint.

WALLS Plaster walls can be leveled or smoothed by hand. However, skim coating is worth twice what it costs.

Cristina you are recommending Antonio in what communities does he work? I am currently interviewing contractors for the reno of my studio apartment.

Our apartment walls were equally as crappy, (with loose plaster in a lot of spots) and we just ended up pulling off all of the moldng and did a quick skim with joint compound. We are finally getting a "pro" job done thanks to a roof leak, but here's what we did a few years ago:

1) Because of the loose plaster, if we just pulled off the molding most of the wall would have come off with it. We "scored" the wall around the molding with a utilty knife to avoid this and doing as little damage as possible

2) Thanks to the old "plaster over the molding" effect we seem to have, we knocked down the edges where we removed the molding with a 7-in -one tool.

3) Loaded up the empty strip in the wall where the molding was with joint compund (It's like glue!) and pressed in some paper tape for strength. Let it dry, then applied another coat to bring the area up to the rest of the wall.

4) Scraped the rest of the walls, then went to town with the joint compound as skim coat. Because the walls were so bad, it took two coats plus a "finish" coat.

5) We only wet sanded with a sponge to knock down any imperfections and this made the skim process fairly dust & mess free.

When done, the walls were still a bit wavy, but a nice smooth wavy!

-Bobby

Can someone (possibly Cristina?) explain exactly what skim coating is, as opposed to replastering?

Our house was a textured finish on the walls of the entranceway and hallway. We really don't care for the textured finish, but we're wondering what our options are to get rid of it. Do we need to rip out the walls entirely and re-drywall? Can you just put up new drywall overtop? Or does it make the most sense to re-plaster?

It seems like it would be the least invasive to just have someone smooth out the walls, but I don't know how difficult, time-consuming and expensive that it.

Anyone?

A tip I got from a professional painter while discussing plaster walls... use topping compound, not joint compound, he was insistent on this point. He doesn't like what the glue in joint compound does when you paint over it and says topping compound is better.

Also, he recommended Crawford's Free for light scratches and dings, and Fix-it-all for bigger patches (but warned it's more difficult to sand). His advice has been spot-on for us while we work on our 1936 walls, the Crawford's is much easier to use then the DAP we had been using.

They also sell some sort of membrane you can put over crumbly plaster and then do the skim coat on top of it to make your walls look smooth as new. This is a last resort for very damaged walls. Whatever you do, don't let anyone talk you into knocking them out for drywall! I heart plaster walls for what they do to sound.

If your trim and moldings are in ok condition, I think it is very worthwhile to strip them down, but I would find someone who specializes in doing it rather then do it myself. I am positive you can find people who do restoration (what you're looking for, not renovation) but you might need to hook up with Old House people. Who knows? You might be surprised at what you find under lots of coats of paint. When we ripped out the two layers of carpet from our house we found beautiful mahogany inlays around the fireplace. Of course, if they are really trashed, then it may not be worth it, but it's hard to tell under all that paint.

regards,
trillium

In general good quality plaster consists of usually three layers. A base layer applied over normally wood lath strips nailed over the bare studs. Then a second layer that is applied and leveled carefully. A final thin finish coat is then applied to give the smooth surface to paint.

The process involves time and skill and usually is pricier than other options.

My understanding of skim coating is that you generally are going to have some one get your existing walls to a reasonably level state by patching and filling large holes and every surface then has a final or "skim" coat of plaster applied to it.

Pros: It is usually cheaper than doing a complete gut and replastering from ground zero.

Cons: Requires some skill in execution to get a good looking surface. If you have some hidden problems in the old plaster you may have some surface problems later on when the base of the old plaster breaks. This process may be more expensive than gutting and redoing with drywall.

Roundabout -- skimcoating is putting a thin layer of plaster (or joint compound or similar -- opinions clearly vary) on top of your existing drywall or plaster. You trowel it on, let it dry, wet-sand it smooth.

If you have a texture already, you need to wet-sand it down to something reasonably flat.

Skimcoating is a DIY job only for the talented and patient. The husband managed to get a sort of rustic look on our kitchen walls back East, and I consider him a saint for managing that, but we would hire a professional if we wanted flat walls.

There are gentle wall textures that you spray on with a big power sprayer, but again, that's not a flat surface.

When I've seen drywall added over failing plaster (or old lathe), there was also a layer of wood framing to support the drywall. So you're losing more than 1/4" inch of depth.

Don't get involved in replastering if the existing plaster is sound and there's a way to skimcoat. Skimcoating is often done over drywall, too, to give it a more plastery look.

On what's under paint on moldings -- it's really rare for any rooms other than the main reception rooms to have "nice" wood (unless the house is super-ritzy and you're looking at the main bedrooms), and often even the trim in those rooms was meant to be painted (or even faux-wood-grained). You can often make a good guess at what's there based on the age and original socio-economics of the building.

Roundabout:

Out here it was very common to put a texture over the drywall. It takes less skill then sanding the joints smooth.

When we pulled out the flooring and baseboards to install wood flooring, you could see where the texturing started over the drywall. Over the 50-odd years of the house's life, there have been patches galore and the texture is terribly mismatched. But right now we don't want to go through the mess and expense of replacing it all.

Usually the only solution in order to be consistent is to tear down the existing drywall and start over if you want smooth walls.

Please listen to wende and team decor!

Skimcoating plaster is SO MUCH NICER than throwing up drywall, which to me looks like a cheap and impatient renovation. It is not prohibitively expensive to have a pro do it, and well worth the $$. Ripping out plaster to put up drywall is archivally criminal imho, lessens the value, and changes the acoustic/sound buffering qualities of the room.

Mouldings in my 100-year-old Bklyn place are molded plaster - not wood - you'll need to check that out. It doesn't look like anything fabulous is going on underneath all that gunk, but who knows . . .

when I first started reading this thread, I thought, oh oh here we go with the never ending plaster vs drywall argument. A debate that rages on so many websites (gardenweb.com) and among pros. i've been having this debate with the drywall guys, with the plaster guys. It's really fascinating, imho!

I'm on the plaster side, through and through. I've been dealing with this, if on the obsessive compulsive side, in my co op which resembles the pixtures. I decided to replaster and then venetian plaster instead of paint, since it was just tinting the finish plaster. Check out masterofplaster.com, that's the product I used to much satisfaction for fixing walls, although the italian all lime venetian plasters (marmorino) are silkier.

Anyway, way too much work for any sane person to handle, but the effects are STUNNING! to say the least.

I would say do not strip the moldings, but antique them instead, hide them with the same color as the walls or give them a crackle finish.

It is truly a hellish job to be on a scaffold, or worse, a ladder and be dealing with that toxic stripper, or any stripper. I've been through the wringer with it, stripper, heat gun, scraping tools. I've probably inhaled enough lead to grow another appendage. that said, I did wear full on osha respirator gas mask worthy of the toxic avenger. It gets hot in there. If you can afford it, hire out. and keep the plaster, amazing how every single trickle of water in the walls becomes so apparent with drywall. I even think that the thin veneer of plaster I applied to my entire bedroom, including ceiling has reduced the sounds coming from above.

good luck

one more vote to skimcoat the walls. We chose to eliminate the texture and go ultra smooth. I did opt to drywall over the ceiling, in hopes of cutting down noise from above.

"They also sell some sort of membrane you can put over crumbly plaster and then do the skim coat on top of it to make your walls look smooth as new. This is a last resort for very damaged walls."-Trillium

- product is called 'Plaster Weld', although pepto pink, it works wonderfully. Simply cut back all your cracks and holes till solid. Slather on the Plaster weld, then your ready to begin skimcoating. It's been a year, and no signs of the cracks.

One more thing... I suggest checking out "Renovating Old Houses" by George Nash (it's a Fine Homebuilding book), he has photos of what the pros did for a crumbling yucky plaster wall and lots of tips for dealing with walls/ceilings/moldings in older houses. I realize this is an co-op not a house, so some of the information won't be useful, but all the interior stuff probably will. Your local library probably has a copy, as well as back issues of Fine Homebuilding and This Old House, which are full of good advice (just ignore the non AT-friendly interior design).

regards,
trillium

I'm surprised I don't see many opinions here about the asthetic and financial value of preservation. I love AT, but we tend to want to make things all new and shiny. If you rip out the old mouldings and replace plaster with drywall, you've just killed the resale appeal of a pre-war apartment, and a lot of people are looking for that.
Restoration is time consuming and expensive. That said, I saw a landlord strip and then repaint beautiful mouldings all over his brownstone. It was stunning. Also, putting up drywall in a lovely old building can make it seem off kilter. I live in a post-war, always wanted a pre-war and tried putting up wainscotting and all that when I first moved in. Big mistake to fight the fundamental bones of a place.
As far as skim coating, I recently learned to do it myself and didn't think it was hard at all as long as you are patient. The trick is that it's not just about one coat. It's usually three, with sandings in between. And if you've never experienced plaster or drywall dust, they put the dust of re-doing your floors to shame. But my wall is lovely and I'm very proud that I did it myself.
In short, if you bought a pre-war for a reason, don't sandblast the character.

I agree with the post by Olga,I have used the product she described Master of plaster and it gave me a beautiful finish.Got it at mirage studios in long island city.good luck

I would love to see an article here on skimcoating/replastering, featuring someone who did it him/herself, and telling us how to do it.

My kitchen ceiling needs help and the contractor wants to put up cement board.

my walls are nearly this bad. my bldg is also prewar, but none of the fixtures look to be from that era -- but a lot of wierd chunks and bits are apparently there to mask some necessary structural "work" or wire or something that can't be messed with. this discussion has made me feel simulatenously guilty, bored and inadequate for my unhandiness.

it's really why people end up needing decluttering -- the core fixes are so much less fun than buying a new pillowcase.

in sum, all i can contribute to this thread is my admiration. ;-)

yes big up to mirage studios, where I Iearned to handle a trowel. www.miragestudiosltd.com

one more very important thing about keeping the cracks from coming through: fiberglass mesh screen in the wide 36 or 48 inch rolls underneath 3 or more coats of plaster or compound, making sure all dry appropriately before each successive application. LOTS OF PATIENCE. from what I understand plasterweld is a bonding agent. pva based, like elmers glue.

of course there are many reasons for cracks and certain sructural cracks will reappear with time. it's the charm of plaster. i know an interior decorator who loves cracks and goes with it, accentuating the look by glazing or antiquing.

I still have so much wall to plaster. yeesh.

ps, i agree how the core fixes are so much less fun. Like I've been in denial about the work I need to do in the rest of apt, instead stuck on buying plants and rearranging furniture in the completed bedroom. oh, and staring and marveling at the glorious venetian plaster walls and ceiling.

ain't ownership grand

one more vote against drywall. I'm finishing a renovation of my kitchen (1922 house) and for reasons i won't get into, we had to rip out plaster and put up drywall. another issue to consider is that with plaster in those days, it wasn't important to have everything level and plumb - you could smooth out inconsistencies in the framing and stud thicknesses (which were common, due to the way wood was finished and planed back then), etc., with the layers of plaster. although if you're in NYC, then it's likely the builders were better craftsmen than those who built my house in madison. even so, putting up drywall will require furring out the studs and jambs, and things still won't be perfectly flat. trust me. also, drywall is much thinner than the plaster layers and creates problems with matching the thickness of door casings. i'm in the middle of fabricating all new wood trim for the kitchen to match the rest of the house. repairing and skim coating plaster is worth the effort. if you don't absolutely need to gut to the studs, don't. also, i hate HATE toxic strippers. it's not hard to strip wood, but invest in a heat gun or, better yet IMO, the silent paint remover (www.silentpaintremover.com - it's nontoxic, much easier and cleaner to use, and won't release lead into the air) if you have a lot of woodwork you'd like to restore, such as that trim around the door in the pic. i agree the picture rail moldings aren't a huge deal to rip off and replace, but trim work like that door casing is.

I am wondering if these descriptions of skim-coating/plastering are suitable for our house. Our entryway and upstairs hallway walls have a nubbly texture that we don't care for, and we are wondering how they can be fixed. Can some sort of product be applied over top to create a smooth surface? Or do we need to rip it out and re-drywall?

lcm,

That's so interesting. The contractor I interviewed wanted to cement board our kitchen ceiling (which may not really make much of a difference, and the ceiling is trashed) and also break into the plaster walls around the bath, check the elderly plumbing, and put up cement board that we'd tile. He said the walls are super-uneven, but maybe the cement board wouldn't even fix that. Anyone have any thoughts?

ON THE ESTHETIC SIDE:

If you decide to ditch the existing moldings and put up new ones (which would be my choice), I would recommend re-thinking the horizontal molding (shown in your picture). Perhaps you don't need it.

Caveat: I don't know much at all about molding and how it affects the scale of a room, but I have noticed a lot of these horizontal moldings in Upper Manhattan and my belief is that they were put up to mimic work in buildings with much, much higher ceilings.

I have these moldings about 15in. below the ceilings in my apartment. The ceilings are barely 9ft, so the end result is that they make the rooms look less tall than they actually are. Further, these horizontal moldings are evil dust traps.

I live in a rental, and if we stay here (still up for debate at the moment), I will eventually have my horizontal moldings removed entirely, and have moldings put up where the walls meet the ceilings. This tends to make rooms look taller, and the moldings can't hold dust. (I would scrap the moldings entirely--I prefer a cleaner look--but the apartment is chock-full of those Park-Avenue French picture moldings, which are consistent with the building's architecture.)

I've had a similar experience removing about 70 years worth of paint from my bathroom tile, molding, door, fixtures, glass etc. using a product called Peel-Away. It comes in varying strengths and toxicities and worked great. I was not expecting much, but it will remove just about anything. You paint/smear it on the pieces you want stripped, cover it in the wax paper that comes with it and wait about two hours. Then you pull off the paper and about 5-7 layers of paint, so thicker paint requires a few rounds. You will have to do a little scraping and picking, but it really does a job detaching the paint from the underlying surface. The fumes are not super offensive, but I would certainly follow the reccomendations for a mask, as there will still be a lot of chips and such. The one issue I do have is that the compound does tend to bleed under masking tape if you are not careful.

Good Luck!

Thanks, Cristina. That is an excellent description.

Our walls don't have cracks or damage, rather, at some point in time (possibly when the house was first built in the 1930s?) the walls were treated to a textured nubbly effect, almost like stucco only not quite so pointy. We would prefer to have smooth walls, but we're not sure if someone can just layer something on overtop of the walls to create a smooth surface or not. Perhaps this is not being historically accurate to the house, but I really think any future residents of this home would probably prefer smoother walls too!

Unfortunately, we don't like in New York, otherwise I would certainly call Antonio based on your recommendation!

Roundabout:

Just chiming in to revise my comment. I didn't realize you were talking about plaster instead of drywall with a knockdown texture over it. If you've got plaster, by all means try and preserve it.

Some of the textured stuff will brush off when it's wetted down with water, I don't know if that is true in your case, I've only seen this with the more modern texture. However, do be careful and get it tested for asbestos, if you decide to remove it. Unfortunately, a lot of textured stuff did have asbestos in it (along with pipe insulation and linoleum flooring).

We have texture on some of our plaster walls, but to tell you the truth, I'm just happy they're not covered in wallpaper like the rest! I'm thinking I'll just use a nice primer, and at least 2 coats of paint, maybe three, and hope the texture just fades into the background.

regards,
trillium

Joint compound over moldings... sounds like my house!
I strongly second the recommendations above re: keeping the historic character of your prewar apartment. Sheetrock, even with a skim coat over, is just not the same.

We are currently stripping all the woodwork from our 1900 Victorian condo. Its slow and tedious, but worth it in our minds. We are using the heat gun (+ face mask) method, and I also recommend PeelAway for harder spots. Go to the forums at oldhouseweb.com... they have a ton of info there re: stripping paint.

As for your walls.... you might be able to get away with some heavy sanding only. Its hard to tell what they look like with only one pic. If not, definitely spring for a professional plasterer and not a general contractor. A plasterer will be able to preserve your walls and frankly do a much better and smoother job.

if you wish do get the best result, most cost effective and the least amount of work and headache take a hammer, chisel and crow bar and carefully remove the mouldings then take them to Lou at DIP & Strip in hackensack, New Jersey 201 487 1115

Someone mentioned a "membrane" that you can use to totally cover really damaged walls. Then someone else mentioned Plaster-Weld as such a membrane.

However, I imagine the membrane first mentioned is something like "Nu-Wall" by a company called Specification Chemicals.

http://www.spec-chem.com/

It's a system that uses a fiberglass mesh fabric imbedded in a really sticky acrylic paint-like substance. It's applied much like wallpaper. You can then either paint it, or skim-coat it. It's considered a full "encapsulation" as far as lead is concerned, and it can really cover a lot of problems. Small cracks are just left as is, and won't re-appear because the system is flexible enough to bridge the movement. Large cracks and structural problems do need to be solved first.

One caveat: I had problems with applying the system over areas that had been patched with joint compound. The water in the system re-activates the joint compound, and has a tendancy to peel off. It's better to prime areas that have joint compound on them first, or either do your patching with plaster (which doesn't "melt" in water.)

Plaster-Weld is really meant to just bond a new coat of plaster (or even joint compound) to an underlying surface, and won't function as a "membrane" too much.