What to do with Walls
As you go into distressed or abused homes (either by malicious
behavior or neglect, or even just age), a common scene is beat
up surfaces. The easiest solution is to empty the house
completely and deal with the walls and ceiling.
I usually opt for texturing the walls. This hides tiny holes and
imperfections in the wall such as scuffs and dings. It won't
hide larger holes, nor will it flatten out a bow in a wall. But,
it'll cover things nicely presenting a clean and neat
appearance. That's what we're after.
I usually get a texture process done on the walls called
"knockdown" (strange name for a process that does on WALLS!).
Knockdown is usually a heavy spray that is applied, the just
before drying, it's knocked down, or flattened with a trough or
scrapper. The advantage is that knockdown hides imperfections on
the wall of these older homes. As a process, it's relatively
quick and easy to apply to an empty house.
You can also not knockdown the spray and you're left with what
some call "orange peel." Either one looks great and satisfy our
goal. It dries hard and is a texture that lasts.
Now, you'd think you would not have to tell your workers to take
out picture hangers before spraying. And, you'd think you would
not have to tell them to take out curtain hangers and switch
plates...but NO! You do! I've had my painter come back out a
time or two to remove all the thing he didn't and re-texture
those areas. Now I STRESS doing this before they start. I've
seen spray so heavy on top of switch plates that they had to be
cut around with a utility knife before removing else they would
tear a big sheet of texture, sheet rock with them, forcing a lot
of patch work.
When you remove curtain hangers, switch plates and nails AFTER
spraying, it tends to pull up more texture and you're left with
a mess! Pull everything off the walls FIRST! Put scotch tape
over the switches so spray doesn't get down in the outlets.