Zinsser Gardz pre skimming?

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Malcolm Daniels

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Original plasterboard may not have had mist coat by builder (not on 3 of the 4 walls anyway). When painting we get tiny bubbles in patches, they have not gone when the paint dries (house is 20 years old now & painted 3 times - spare bedroom!).

Clearly something has been wrong all this time, removing a dado & wallpaper over bottom half of room, with the intention to go back to fully painted walls has exposed the fact that the previous coat of paint on 3 walls can be peeled off like skin. We were told to PVA the walls before that coat of paint to help it 'stick', didn't work as it bubbled anyway, but now we can just wash the PVA off.

As we cannot strip it back fully (back to bare plasterboard), would it be wise to put a coat of Zinsser Gardz over all the walls, so we may achieve a good 'key' for a plaster skim. We don't want whatever causes the bubbling to just carry on doing it, even through a new skim of plaster - feels like we'd just be applying the plaster to something that isn't 'sound'??

Trying to minimise further upheaval, can't really re-board & start from scratch altogether! Thanks.
 
Original plasterboard may not have had mist coat by builder (not on 3 of the 4 walls anyway). When painting we get tiny bubbles in patches, they have not gone when the paint dries (house is 20 years old now & painted 3 times - spare bedroom!).

Clearly something has been wrong all this time, removing a dado & wallpaper over bottom half of room, with the intention to go back to fully painted walls has exposed the fact that the previous coat of paint on 3 walls can be peeled off like skin. We were told to PVA the walls before that coat of paint to help it 'stick', didn't work as it bubbled anyway, but now we can just wash the PVA off.

As we cannot strip it back fully (back to bare plasterboard), would it be wise to put a coat of Zinsser Gardz over all the walls, so we may achieve a good 'key' for a plaster skim. We don't want whatever causes the bubbling to just carry on doing it, even through a new skim of plaster - feels like we'd just be applying the plaster to something that isn't 'sound'??

Trying to minimise further upheaval, can't really re-board & start from scratch altogether! Thanks.
Is the mist coat bubbling? Or the final top coat?
 
I was taught that pva prior to painting was a no-no. Emulsion doesn't take to it as you've described. Mist of paint should be sufficient.
 
The original builders magnolia seemed fine. After a few years we repainted it, got the tiny bubble thing going on then, we assumed it was the Dulux emulsion not being great.

So when we re-did it a few years further on we asked around, told "PVA then paint" so did that on the 3 problematic walls, stuck a dado rail on & just painted the top half........which bubbled again (though the wallpaper had stuck really well)!

Though the PVA hadn't bubbled at the time, it looks like we put it on fairly thin'ish & I can wash it off now, even though its spent 5 years sandwiched between layers of paint. It's definitely stopped the final layer from sticking - it's quite therapeutic pezeling it off (though not remotely funny).

Don't want to do anything wrong again & end up with yet more problems. It will need skimming, when I say the wallpaper had "stuck really well", a lot of scraping has been necessary to get it off, & the dado was fixed with no-more-nails. Though the plasterboard isn't badly damaged, it will never produce a good smooth surface for just a paint job.
 
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Think you might need to reskim. A plasterer will need to see the walls in question. Bit baffling really.
 
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