Back to scraping

With the staining wrapping up, I move back to scraping off the textured paint in the bathroom walls. The top portion of the walls is pretty much clean of textured paint and now there are blotches of what appears to be joint compound over lime plaster. Under the joint compound, it looks like classic lime plaster because I see the horsehair and also the surface is much rougher and stronger than the top layers. My guess is that they plastered this room with a scratch coat of lime plaster and then finished with gypsum plaster.

On the bottom portion of the walls, it’s trickier to remove the textured paint with the Speedheater. The bottom portion of the walls are covered with boards that protrude about 1/2” from the plaster walls. My guess these pieces were drywall that were added in the 40s or 50s based upon the design of the wallpaper on them. The paint on these boards seems to be on a black waxy substance that starts to melt when heated, so if I’m not very careful with the scraper, I end up ripping into the softer surface below the paint.

I’m not exactly sure what all of these materials are - joint compound and wallpaper on a tar paper backing?

Joint compound over lime plaster.

When I get sick of scraping the walls, I continue work on removing the paint on the built-in’s doors. These are loaded with white paint and adhesive that was applied when the plywood veneers were added. To remove this gunk I go with a few coats of CitrStrip.

Stripping 1 of the built-in’s doors.