What's new

DIY Home Improvement?

Karen

Karen

Wiggle it, just a little bit!
Team Lead
Joined
Jun 28, 2008
Messages
33,820
I am taking my Mom to Lowes tomorrow to look for options to help her finish re-doing her kitchen. Their house (where I grew up) is about 150 years old... a farmhouse with lots of "character". In her kitchen she has pieces of the type of material that peg boards are made of... but without the holes. She had wallpaper covering it before but started stripping that off and now wants to fix the walls somehow so that we can paint the walls. Do any of you have any experience with patching gaps and cracks and then making the walls paintable without drywall?

Should we spackle and patch or should we add texture somehow to cover the cracks? Help!
 
Sounds hard. I've done a fair amount of spackling, but that sounds like a much bigger project and a lot of sanding.
 
We bought a house right after we got married with horrible walls. They were covered in wallpaper when we bought them and they were a truly weird texture under all that wallpaper when I finally got it off. I ended up buying paintable wall paper, it was smooth, but you can get it embossed with a texture too and when you line it up side by side, you couldn't see the seams and you could paint it just like a wall.
 
I'm not sure it wouldn't crack... I think with the boards expanding and contracting in the different seasons, it would crack in the gaps and holes and I think that would be a crazy amount of work too
 
We used paintable caulk to fill and smooth gaps since we were already doing around the windows. Worked great for us!
 
hardboard is what you mean... its crap! I know I still have heaps of it in my house sadly! Horrible horrible stuff to work with...

If your mum can afford it reline it with plasterboard (Gib) and get it professionally plastered (saves you heaps of money in the long run and leaves you with a head of hair! hard hard work and sanding dust gets absolutely everywhere)

If not you need to look at filling the cracks/gaps with a flexible gap filler (Sika brand here in NZ is fantastic!) comes in tubes that you use with a caulking gun... Thanks to the earth still moving here I discovered that if you have an older house that moves a little you need a flexible filler rather than standard plaster... which doesn't flex with movement instead falling out and looking terrible...

hardboard can be painted over however it will NEVER and I do mean never look as good as a modern wall... you will need to prime it and you will need at least two good coats of paint over that... haven't papered over any of the hardboard walls I have here (if you are looking at anaglypta type papers which can be painted over which would hide imperfections in the walls better) but I would bet you would need to seal the walls before putting the paper up anyway since hardboard sucks moisture big time if unsealed.

Hope this helps some... its not going to be cheap or a quick job though... and if your mum can afford it I would so go with pulling the hardboard off... lining, insulating and relining the walls with plasterboard (known as gib here) did this with the laundry/shower room reno my dad and I just finished in my house and I LOVE IT!
 
oh and yeah the bigger part of my house is in the over 100 year mark too ... this is just what I found worked best for me... or what the painters/builders did during the earthquake repairs...
 
can you get something like paneling to go over it...like that beadboard?
http://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/how-to-install-beadboard-paneling/index.html
and they have this way cool wall covering (wallpaper but more oomph)
101708beadboard-01.jpg

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/look-beadboard-effect-paintabl-66821
and you can paint it!?
 
that looks like what we call anaglypta here... love the look of that one Anne and only $20 a roll!!!! super score... here its about $60-70 a roll!!!!
 
Oh! Awesome suggestions everyone! Thank you so much. I love that beadboard paper and I think that stuff may have to find its way into my own house. I know my moms budget will be pretty low, so we'll see what she says. I'll post pics when we get started this weekend.
 
Back
Top