Take that Liquid Nails

Want to know how remove liquid nails from gypsum board, and finish it like a pro? We asked ourselves the same question and now I can now tell you how! I have to admit, Chris and I were a little worried about how it would look in the end. We REALLY didn't want to have a "looks like it was done by lame-o's" kind of a look. And our gypsum board had SUPER taken a beating from removing the panels and liquid nails. So we had our work cut out. But I can now say WE WERE VICTORIOUS!

Some places the liquid nails came off with the paneling. I used a utility knife to cut any loose paper (you don't want anything flopping around when you go to skim coat). We used the palm sander to take off all the liquid nails, careful to move quickly enough so the adjacent paint didn't get warm and goo-up. If you seriously are thinking of sanding off liquid nails,  you need to know, it is not going to be a quick process. It takes a long stinking time.

Chris was such a champ. He ended up doing most of the sanding (especially the ceiling, I didn't even touch that mess above my head). He'll tell you too, if you are going to be sanding above your head, you need some glasses. Drywall dust to the eye is very uncomfortable. The whole process creates quite a mess, which I would have left day to day (I'm a bad person). Chris always vacuumed up after. It probably took us a good 4 or 5 days (spread out because it was sucky) to get all the liquid nails off. So we would have had a mess for a long time if it were left to me!

For the patching we used Joint Compound instead of spackle. Spackle isn't made to skim coat. A thin coat went on first. Then I hand sanded with a sanding sponge to make sure it all blended in well. This technique also worked fabulous where paper was exposed. The paper kinda got all wrinkly from the moisture and made the patch on top all wrinkly too. After letting it dry, and sanding it flat, it was ready for another skim coat on top and looked great. Goodbye wrinkles!

The knock down texture I also created with the joint compound. (never used the can to do it, it probably works just fine, I just don't want to buy the can when I can do it myself). I just goobered up some globby-globs, and then using my drywall knife scraped across it to match the adjacent texture. Not too hard. Just took a couple minutes to figure it out.

The walls and ceiling turned out great! Some re-caulking happened where we had to rip it up with the panels. and we were ready to paint. We got the color matched at Sherwin Williams (cause they are the best and my absolute fave, and I go no where else). And just look at it. We aren't Lame-o's after all.

So liquid nails can come off. You might notice we took the chance to redo the top railing of the wainscot. We wanted something a little cleaner and not so rustic. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.