Heavy wallpaper can make for tolerance of badly-cracked plaster walls. Fixing the walls is a very large commitment. Here is initial revelation of a wall, using a steamer. Wallpaper removal must be complete.
Big sections with multiple paper layers are quickly bagged, taking away a lot of the steamer water.
Wallpaper removal is best done with a powerful steamer. Mine is Warner Model 5687. I have two, and allow wall-repair customers to borrow at no cost. Mostly, the job is mine.
A primed fairly-strong first paper layer has to come down too. The biggest challenges shown up now as hard patches that had been flush with paper, and are now proud of walls by 1/16" thickness, and more.
Pulling proud patches off wood lath results in growth of areas that will need new plaster.
All cracks are veed 3/32" minimum full depth of plaster.
Adding of plaster is a small step. after crack filling and lath priming, with flexible grout.
Badly-failed ceiling plaster is still retained by drywall. The tape joint at edges was razored for wallpaper removal, and must now be stabilized with flexible grout. Gaps are large sometimes, but I find no alternative to several-step application of grout. Walls here are already looking smooth from large-area troweling of flexible grout.
Walls get a hard coat of excellent oil-base primer, mud smoothing, and touch-up primer. I am learning to accept 100%-acrylic primers too. This work was completed 8/25/2008. At September 2010 I have this somewhat disappointing report: The walls still look great. Within a week or so of your finishing, there were a couple very small hairline cracks that opened up. I filled them with 45 year caulk before putting on another coat of primer. This required two minutes and an insignificant amount of caulk. Probably the primer itself would have been enough. In any event, there have been no more cracks. Everything looks great.
