I read somewhere that for every 1 hour of painting, you spend 3 hours preparing the walls. I can now say that this is not unfounded.
Once we’d stripped the wallpaper, we washed down the walls with Sugar Soap to get the last of the glue residue off. We had a few patches of mould to deal with from before we got the HRV that I had to scrub off (and I HATE MOULD, ugh) but we had this great stuff from Mitre 10 which took it right off.
Darren then got the sander and basically went over the walls completely, sanding off bits where it was still rough and sanding down parts where we had not been able to remove the wallpaper. The layer under the top wallpaper was another layer which had been sanded down quite heavily in some places but in others it hadn’t fused with the gib and had peeled off. We tried to tidy this up as much as possible – we knew it was going to be futile to try and actually get all the under layer off.
Once we’d sanded it down, we applied a sealer coat over top. This was pretty quick to apply with a roller (we’d also bought a longer broom type handle to attach to the roller so it was even faster). Now we were ready for the skimcoat.
Darren wanted to try the skimcoating himself, and I totally thought it would be a good idea. Sometimes though it’s hard to tell what people recommend you don’t do because it needs skill and what you don’t do because it requires a lot of effort. Skim coating is one of those things you should just get a professional in for. Darren did an awesome job on the section that he attempted but it takes ages and is quite hard.
We have decided to get a gib stopper to come and do it – basically it has been a good lesson in when to call in the experts. Nothing lost, but nothing gained so we’re hoping to find someone in the local paper who can come and sort it for us.