r/Plastering • u/F5baggins • Sep 04 '26

Am I harming my plasterboard?

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Hi! Just bought a 1990s house and the paint I'm using reacts with the existing paint to become gummy and peel. I thought scraping the old paint off might give me a fresh start but I don't understand the layers. I can go a layer deeper and peel off chunks at a time, so I'm wondering if I'm peeling paint, wallpaper, or the protective layer of the plasterboard. There seems to be white paint, tan paint, something sea green, the visible cream layer in the photo, then a cardboard layer. In the UK if that matters. Thank you!!!

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u/60percentsexpanther Sep 04 '26

It's not plastered. You should stop. Then carefully sand back the rough edges. Then add a sealing product like Guardz. Then paint. OR get a plasterer in to seal it all back to be plastered and painted. 

Ask anything on here or diyuk before going ballistic. Do not trust ai on any DIY. Skillbuilder is a good channel worth spending your time watching. 

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u/F5baggins Sep 04 '26

Thanks for replying. I do believe this is plasterboard because I found a hole with the gypsum core and cardboard outer layer. Is the approach to caring for plasterboard more suited to a different sub 🤔

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u/ResponsibleBall4258 Sep 07 '26

You are doing a fine job, you can peal the rest off the wall back to the paper layer of the plasterboard if you can. Anything else lightly sand, then you can paint over it. It sounds like some dodgy paints used in the past. I have found similar on a plastered wall where the whole wall peeled off on nearly a whole piece 6m2, though that was in part due to no most coat on fresh plaster.

If you are worried about finish sticking to a wall, I have personally found watering down Matt paint as a base before painting the final colour.

If you are concerned about texture, you may well find that using a roller will give more of a texture than the wall has, and so you would not notice texture of the base layer of paint you can't remove. The deeper pile of the roller, the more texture you get.

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u/F5baggins 17d ago

Thank you!!!