I painted over wallpaper * how to paint over wallpaper

Are you shocked??

I know that it's a major makeover no-no, but it was a last resort. We had wallpaper in almost every room in the house. The entryway and main bathroom came off with hot water and fabric softener. The paper in the kitchen was a bit more stubborn, so we rented a steamer and it came off with some work. Our bathroom was a different story. There was not one peel, one corner coming loose, nothing. It was stuck on there and had not budged for 30 years. We tried everything: vinegar, fabric softener, the chemical you buy in stores, and finally the steamer, but it was causing major damage to the drywall. I talked to my neighbors about it, my new friends at Lowes and Home Depot, the guy at the paint store, and they all said to paint over it if I had tried everything. Like the guy at the paint store said, "if it hasn't moved in 30 years, it ain't goin' nowhere."
Sooooo, that's what we did:

We sealed it with Kilz premium primer, waited a week or so to see if we had any bubbling, or problems. Everything was good, so then I textured over that, primed again, and then painted. Pain in the rear!

I textured because it had a lovely gold pattern on it that was going to show through the paint, plus I wanted to hide all seams. I'll show you how I did it:

The first lesson in texturing is that there is no lesson. There are no rules, just whatever you choose, try to make it look uniform and that you meant for it to look that way. You can choose any pattern you want.

Get some lightweight joint compound and a putty knife. This big old box cost $10.

You can also get the fancy kind that goes on pink and then goes white when it's dry, but it's around $20. I used that in my kitchen and it made me want to eat it because it looked like pink frosting.

Anyway, just shmear it on the wall: not smear. Shmear. Pretend like you're frosting a bagel.

Then, I took a regular old plastic grocery sack and lifted it up and down all over to make these little rifts:

Then, I took the putty knife and just smoothed over the little ridges for a kind of knock-down texture, kind of stucco, kind of Melissa-doesn't-know-what's-she's-doing-so-let's-make something-up-look:

Then, we primed over it and painted over that. To see the finished bathroom, click here.

Hey, anything was better than this!
Works for me.

Have a wonderful Wednesday~