Walls and Ceilings - Plaster Walls...

My husband and I recently bought a 50 year old house. All of the walls are plaster and most seem to have this brown paper on them that has been painted in some rooms and left as is in the closets. It resembles a very thin wallpaper, but it wasn't put up well anywhere. The seams are terrible. I don't want to ask a stupid question, but we've never owned a house with plaster walls. So before we work on trying to remove it we wanted to find out if there is traditionally some covering on the plaster walls or if this was just a terrible (and 40ish yr. old) job.

Thanks for your help!

Hi jknauss,its probably old wallpaper from the 40's or 50's.But then again it might be something that the previous homeowner saw on TV,from that nut case Lynette Jennings,where you put up brown paper bags on your walls and then paint them..lol.If it's hard to remove you might want to rent a wallpaper steamer,makes the job alot easier.

Good Luck

I just ran into that problem re-modeling a room, I think what you are seeing is the backing of previously peeled off wallpaper. I peeled off my vinyl wallpaper which was about 30 years old and was left with this brown paper. I rented a steamer tho help remove this. Also you could try soaking this in vinegar, by either spraying and sponging it on (this will soften the glue and allow you to scrape it off) or soak newspaper in vinegar and press single sheets onto the wall until the brown paper has softened enough to scrape off. I personally preferred using the steamer (work top to bottom) but still had to scrub the walls with wallpaper remover to get off the glue residue. It took me 4 days of steaming and scrubbing to do a 12x18 room! Hope this helps!