Drywall – We painted new drywall before it was primed. Now I am painting a few years later and some of that paint peeled off. How to fix this

drywallpaintprimer

A few years ago we painted some drywall without priming it. Currently we are redoing the room with different colors. I am a novice painter so I put masking tape on that wall to have a clean Edge on the adjacent wall. When I pulled the tape off a lot of that paint on unprimed drywall came off. Are there any options besides removing all of the old paint? I have scraped some of it and got it to a point where it's on a little better. It seems to be the worst at top of wall.

Additionally, as I scrape the paint off the drywall have noticed that the drywall seems to be powdery. The guy that did the drywall is extremely anal about dust so I don't think it's from when it was originally done. Soft maybe a better way to describe it. My scraper easily digs into the drywall.

Best Answer

Paint that has not properly adhered to the surface below could definitely peel off with the slightest touch. Depending on conditions, any masking tape might cause this; however I would suggest using high quality painter's masking tape to minimize the chances.

The soft material you have encountered under the peeling paint is the drywall joint compound used to cover edges, corners, and joints when drywall is installed.

I am afraid that you are in a tough spot now that it has begun to peel. You need to make sure the paint that is most unstable is removed, or it is likely to peel off in the future, including when you repaint the wall. Then you will need to:

  • sand the areas where sound paint meets substrate until the interface is smooth, then prime and repaint.

OR

  • use a wide trowel/mud knife to apply one or more coats of drywall finishing mud (sometimes called topping compound) to the peeled area, sanding after each coat, until the wall is smooth and free of visible imperfections. Then prime and repaint.
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