Painting - painting damaged walls

I need to paint walls in an old house. The original walls were plaster and we had to replace portions of some of the walls with drywall. The paint on the remaining plaster walls is pealing due to water damage. After I scrape the loose paint, is there a type of paint, or a product I can use to hide all the imperfections of the these walls?

Hello & welcome to the forums.

Gardz made by Zinsser is pretty good at hiding imperfect walls and there are others as well. If there are cracks in the plaster I would recommend patching these with paper tape & joint compound. Some of the faux finishes are good for hiding imperfect walls also, at least this what I've seen on some of the Home Improvement shows, but those guys do alot of things I'd never try on someone else's house.

I'm going to move this over to the Painting forum, the painting pros will likely have some more advice for you. Good luck. ;)

Thanks awesomedell for answering so quickly. We'll give Gardz a try, I really appreciate your help.

If the walls are in too bad of shape you can apply a skim coat over the whole wall, then primer and paint and you'll end of with a very nice finished product. Good luck.

Gardz is water thin and dries clear, I doubt it will hide anything. It does make an excellent sealer for the application of joint compound though. Either mudding, applying texture, or a faux finish of some sort will hide imperfections. And there's always wallpaper.:D

So what is a good paint to use for hiding imperfections prowall? I know we use something like Hides-all or super hide a while back in a telephone switching office we did some remodeling in, but can't recall the exact name of the product.

I'm not sure of any specific brand that hides imperfections, but anything 'flat' will help hide by keeping the light from reflecting off the surface. If the wallls are an issue, and the customer wants an eggshell or satin finish, we highly recommend a flat instead to help minimize the shine that makes imperfections 'jump out' at you. This is if they don't want to pay for the walls to be fixed. And if the wall has been fixed, and has a lot of patches on it, Gardz or any other high quality latex primer (2 coats) will help seal the surface so 'flashing' doesn't occur when painted.