Vinyl wallcovering/painting

[markow05]

We plan on re-painting all our walls at some point but for right now the kitchen is ideally my next priority inside job.

We're taking down the vertical strips & chair rail, filling the creases with drywall compound, sanding for smoothness then adding a coat of kilz to cover the wallpaper. My question though is......since it's in the kitchen would it be best to completely scrub down the wallpaper using an industrial strength cleaner before doing all this because of grease buildup from years of other people living there before us?

Any suggestions/comments would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Trish

[Yanita]

Hi,

Prep is the most important part of any painting project. We recommend using TSP, can be bought at Lowe's or other home improvement stores to wash your walls.

Prime well, I always prefer 2 coats of primer, let each coat cure 24 hours. Others will argue differently and that is fine, but I do not want the paint peeling off the wall every time it accidentally gets bumped. I prefer Latex Kilz Premium 2.

Then paint with the choice of your color.

As for removing your batten strips and chair rail, the jury is out on this one. Yes, you can fill with joint compound. Many have done this successfully. Others do not.

The purpose of these batten strips and the wider seams is to allow the home to flex without causing wall damage, stress cracks, bowing etc.

Alot depends on the area that you live and the type of foundation your home sits on.

Another problem I generally run into is the wall board has a slight texture to it. Once the seams are filled and sanded they are smooth, to me they are always more noticeable than painted batten strips.

Many have covered the different textures with various faux painting techniques.

There are many threads in the forum about this. Please feel free to read the past post, you can do a search here on site.

Good luck,

Yanita