Painted woodchip

NEVER AGAIN...!!!!

I've had months of dealing with the stuff! Recently relocating to the UK, we decided to move into a old cottage (for a laugh, I think!)...Well, I think the place was 80% covered with woodchip, painted in rather interesting colours too..! I've always avoided it like the plague (well, wallpaper full stop) and have never understood why anyone would actually choose to put it on the wall.....But it is very true, it's often there for a reason, to cover up the underlying walls....

I was just going to strip the paper and paint regardless of the wall condition, but in the end we decided to just be done with it and re-plaster everywhere - think I would have just gone nuts otherwise...!

But yes, I was rather fed up of steaming & scraping ! To be honest, small areas where it seemed to be spot welded on, I just left and we plastered over it ! Gladly, I left the plastering to my old man...

Here are a few snaps, from just one room.....

Steve.

Oh dear ... I like woodchip ... reminds me of happy student days (think Withnail & I flat).

But good luck. Did you hire an angle grinder yet?

Ahh John... Been there, done that! My ploy in the end was to use a rotating wire brush in my angle grinder, run it all over the surface, then give it a thorough soaking with soapy water.

Even then, it was still a complete swine.

PS, looking good Steve!

It's bloody awful stuff. I've made a decision to remove all wallpaper etc and just have painted walls. Thinking ahead to cheap decorating costs for SWMBO when I eventually perish (well, actuarial tables suggest she will outlive me)

As expected there were lots of sins covered by the woodchip, which will require a fair amount of work to fix. What's even more annoying is that when the plumber upgraded our central heating (those control knobs on each radiator with numbers), he managed to make the radiator in the downstairs loo unremoveable. Not sure how he managed it, but there's no play on the connections at either end, so I can't pull them out enough. I've got the plumber (a different one) coming on Saturday morning to replace the taps in the basin (can't get the gland off to replace the washer - the whole tap turns), so I'll get him to have a look at it. What's the betting that "you need a new radiator"?

The whinge factor from SWMBO has to be heard to be believed. I can't seem to persuade her that it's a waste of time covering the sink until I get to the painting stage. Her argument is that it'll save having to clean it, and "it might get scratched". I tried to tell her that it would take far longer to elaborately cover the sink than to clean it, but she's not having it ... (sigh) She always makes an enormous fuss when I decorate - hates any disruption to her routine, although she likes the end result.

The other thing that intrigues me is that when she's gardening (she's the gardener) she expects tea every hour, but I received a grand total of one cup in the space of eight hours, and she had the cheek to say it should have been my turn to make dinner!

Anyway, the painted layer of the woodchip is nearly all off. Just a couple of stubborn bits in areas which the scraper won't fit. They'll be a sod to get off, but I'm leaving that till tomorrow, when I'll steam off what's left of the paper backing. I'll have to go to B and Q to get some ceramic filler for the filler gun to repair the worst of the revealed sins. I could have sworn I had some, but SWMBO denies moving it ...