Walls and Ceilings - Aftermath of a Z-Brick Removal

I need some advice, please. We're renovating our house, and we have removed Z-brick from a wall.

The z-brick popped off easily, and we finished scraping off the adhesive. Now we are staring at drywall, but the drywall isn't perfect.

The top layer of the drywall came off with the adhesive, so it's down to the brown paper layers. It looks like there's plenty of paper layers left.

Now the question. Would it be a bad idea to cover the wall in joint compound, smooth it out, then prime and paint? Or, is there some reason we should remove the drywall entirely and put new sheets up?

Any advice would be very welcome. Thanks in advance.

Absolutely. Skim coat the drywall and sand it once dry. You may have to do a couple of times to get the desired finish. Be sure to indent all the blade scrapes you made so they sit below the surface and treat them as nail holes, applying compound on them with a trowel.

Outstanding. Thank you, Chandler, especially for the quick reply.

I've got a massive tub of joint compoundn and I know what I'm doing this Saturday.

Well, how did it go? We like to hear about finished projects.

Larry

Larry,

Funny you should ask, I was going to come on and post today!

So we bought a large tub of joint compound, a hawk, and a trowel on Saturday. We took it over and immediately started putting up mud.

We put it on as we'd seen suggested, starting in the middle and smoothing out to the edges. The first coat I was worried about, because it was kind of thin and started cracking as it dried.

We let it dry overnight, lightly sanded, and put up another coat in the morning and let it dry while working on other projects (we're really transforming this house). It's not perfect, but with one more sanding I think we're ready to prime. We didn't have to demo the drywall and we've saved the $750 a contractor wanted to do it!

My girlfriend has the camera, but if I can get it from her we'll download the pics and post before and after shots once we get the primer and paint up. We're documenting the entire process.

So thanks for the advice, and for the quick response. I'm really appreciative of the community here and I look forward to both getting more advice and giving back what I'm learning now.

Great! We will look forward to the pix. Just tag them onto this post so we don't get confused. Come on back with us on your next project, or tune in and help some of the others.