Home decoration: the paint from hell

Factual Questions
1

I’m redecorating my bathroom. Over the Easter weekend I removed the semi-perished vinyl wallpaper from hell and been left with a painted subsurface with large patches going through to the plasterboard and wood behind. It didn’t sand well and is quite thick in places so I got out the heat gun. This just resulted in the fire alarm going off.

So I tidied up and left it until today when I prepared the bathroom for Round Three: paintstripper.

I speak to the assistants at B&Q and buy a suitable paintstripper. Lots of protective newspaper held in place with masking tape, covered by a plastic dustsheet. So I apply the paintstripper. Nada. Almost no effect whatsoever on what I want to remove - but it definitely works on the paint on wooden surround.

What is this stuff? How do I easily remove it? It will sand, but that will take me a LONG time. Even with an electric sander.

2

To heck with all that work. Pretty much the standard practice where the walls are damaged by wall paper removal is to “skin” the wall with joint compound.

Get yourself a wide taping knife and a 5 gallon bucket of taping mud. Lay a thin coat over the entire wall, it takes practice but it isn’t really all that hard.

You may also want to invest in a pole sander because your first attempt at skinning a wall isn’t likely to produce a glassy smoth surface. Just lay it on as smoothly as you can, then sand it nice and smooth. go back and repair any bad spots.

Total time, a few hours skinning an hour or so sanding. Dont forget to cover everything or you clean up time will be days. Drywall dust gets into everything