An update on where we are in the master bedroom renovation and how to paint over wallpaper!

I thought I would share a little update on the master bedroom renovation, and also the steps to take if you want to paint over wallpaper that won’t come off of the wall.

If you remember, this is what the bedroom originally looked like when we purchased the home.

{Please excuse the poor quality of the photos, most of these were taken with my smartphone.}

Master Bedroom Before Renovation

The master bedroom in it’s original state was pink, pink, and more pink.

Pink shag carpet, pink drapes, and a metallic satin wallpaper covered in pink roses. This wallpaper in 1972 was probably very expensive, because it still looks perfect 40 years later. 

Pink shag carpet, pink drapes, pink rose wallpaper.

It was a shock to the senses, the first time we walked into this room.

Fortunately, I could see past all of the pink. It was a wonderful space, nice and large at over 300 sq. ft, a bay window on the front wall and a built in window seat on the other.

The room also had nice crown moulding, chair railing, two walk in closets, and a smaller closet that was lined in cedar.

Ripping out pink shag carpet.

Not surprisingly, the first thing that had to go was the pink shag carpet.  

I’m not a big fan of carpet anyway, and the forty year old pink shag was just way too much! We’ll be installing hardwood floors, just as we did in the kitchen and family room.

Every room in this house is wallpapered with the exception of one. And, unfortunately, none of it wants to come off. This is the third room in our renovation that we have dealt with the stress of removing the wallpaper, and after over 40 years on the wall, it has basically become part of the sheet rock.

Every attempt to remove it has resulted in sheet rock coming down with it. We’ve tried all the tips and tricks that the experts recommend to no avail. This wallpaper just does not want to come off.

Covering the wallpaper seams with joint compound.

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After consulting with the experts at Sherwin Williams, we decided to paint over the wallpaper {only above the chair rail}, and the first step in doing this was to spackle over the seams.  

We actually chose to use joint compound, because it seemed to work better than the spackling paste. For some reason the spackling paste did not want to stick to the slick, satiny finish of this wallpaper.

Joint compound to cover the seams in the wallpaper.

Painting wallpaper prep.

Once the joint compound dried, we sanded it smooth with a fine grit sanding block.

Sanding smooth the seams.

The next step is giving all the walls a coat of oil based primer.  

It’s very important to used oil based primer, because it will seal the wallpaper so that when you start painting with your water based paint, it doesn’t soak through to the paper and make it start bubbling. Although, with this paper, I’m not so sure that would even make it come off!

Once the oil based primer is dry, if any of the seams are still showing, we will need to spackle and sand again. Hopefully, there won’t be any seams showing and we can move on to painting the walls with the paint color of your choice.

Under the chair rail, we are covering the wallpaper with our modified version of board and batten.

We’re also having to fill in with baseboard trim where we removed the old electrical baseboard heating units.

We are planning on planking the ceiling, much like we did in our kitchen renovation. Only this time, we are going to do it over the top of the popcorn.  

We have always scraped the popcorn off in the other rooms, and it is a messy, messy business.  This time we are going to plank right over the top of the popcorn.  

The first step was to find the joists in the ceiling and mark them so that we will know where to place our nails. I will be posting more about planking the ceiling as we get to it.

Grids on ceiling marking joists in ceiling, prepping for planking.

How many of you have seen a phone jack like this?!?

This is where we are so far, and I will post more updates as we progress, but for now, I can’t wait to see the last of that rose wallpaper!  

Cheers,

          Cindy

UPDATE: See the finished renovation of the master bedroom HERE!