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We are facing a delimma...We are trying to get our house ready to sell and need to do something with the walls in the bathrooms and kids rooms. It is the typical mobile home walls with a batten strip down the wall inbetween each piece of sheetrock. If we pulled the batten strips and filled the gaps with non expanding foam could we wallpaper over them and cover up the fake looking "texture" and essentially give the bathroom and tape and textured look?

hi,

I do not know about using foam, never heard of anyone trying that. Most folks generally use joint compound or latex caulking. I personally think it is a waste trying to get the seams to match. The seams always appear smooth and the wallboard still has slight texture. If the home has a tendency to shift during the change of seasons, lots of rain etc, then the seams generally crack.

Since you are selling I think I would simply wash the walls well with TSP and then prime well with Kilz Premium primer and then paint a neutral color. Much easier than removing battens, filling seams and wallpapering.

JMO,

Yanita

Will the primer you speak of fill in the "textrue" of the viynl coverd sheetrock?

Not enough to be able to cover the difference from the "filled' seam to the wall board.

In other words...no.

If you want the sheetrock look then you have 2 options...#1. being that you tear out al your wallboard and replace with rock.

#2. Remove battens, since wallboard does not have the recessed sides like sheetrock it is hard to tape and mud. You can recess the edges by taking a 2x4 on edge and giving a few good whacks to the 2 by on the edge seam of the wallboard. Thus hopefully creating a slight indented area. I can foresee this being a real pain in the butt, and if you give one to many whacks could ruin the wallboard edge completely.
After that is done then you would skim coat the remainder of the wall with mud. Sand lightly, wipe with tack cloth, prime and paint.

Also since you mentioned wallpaper, there is a heavy paper that you can put on your walls to cover the seams and other slight imperfections, once that is done then you can wallpaper over that. I forget what the first paper is called but it is readily available at most home improvement stores.

Yanita