We are making an offer on a home with textured walls. Unfortunately, the owner has many, many pictures/decorations hanging. Can we ask that the walls be repaired as part of the offer? Repair looks like a very big deal to me.
Walls – Repairing textured walls
repairwalls
Related Solutions
The best solution is to get them replastered. However, this is a messy and expensive job as you need to hack off the old plaster first. The expense comes from hiring a plasterer.
The cheapest solution is to cover them with drywall. This will give you a nice smooth wall.
You can glue the drywall directly to the plaster which will work if the current plaster is not too uneven. A better finish will be obtained if you batten the walls first ensuring that the battens are vertical and level horizontally. However, as @Tester101 points out you'll have to "pull out" all your sockets and light switches and have issues around door and window frames.
A better solution would be to rip the plaster off and then plasterboard, again either gluing or battening depending on the quality of the wall. Battening would allow you to add insulation and/or a void for feeding any cables you might want to add (ethernet, coaxial, power) in the future. This is still messy, but should be cheaper.
Sanding is possible, but it will generate a lot of dust and is a lot of effort for indeterminate results. If the plastering isn't too bad you might get a good finish, but you will have to skim the walls again to get a really smooth finish.
Here's my take on drywall vs skim vs full update.
Skimcoat
Skim coating over the plaster that is already cracking would not be a good idea. Even if you use a harder more durable mud or plaster, it will still most likely crack because of the age of your house, and the fact that your walls are already cracking (and will probably continue to do so). The other down side is the sanding mess.
I recently bought a condo that had nasty texture as well on the walls which I wanted to get rid of. I decided for the first room that I would use a heavy 60 grit paper to remove as much of the larger chunky texture as I could. I then skim coated with drywall mud to smooth out the walls. It took several coats to get perfectly smooth, and a whole lot of cleaning afterward. But, in my case, I know my drywall is sound and not cracking underneath, so I could reliable coat without having to worry about patching too much in the future.
Drywall
Using a thin drywall layer over the top may be a quicker and cheaper solution. This will eliminate the cracking issues and will give you as smooth a wall as you like, with little mess in comparison to skim coating the entire wall.
I would still use a 60 grit paper or paint scraper (if it will cut through your texture) and knock down as much of the heavy texture to allow the drywall to sit closer to the surface. This will help eliminate waviness in the wall where the texture might be outrageous (like it was in my house), and allow you to use a thinner drywall.
A possible major downside to this is electrical boxes? Maybe someone with more electrical knowledge can speak whether adding 1/2 inch thickness to a wall would cause issues with the electrical boxes being set further in? If so, again, I would sand and use 1/4 inch.
Full Update
If I was going to be living in this house for the rest of my life, I would consider a full update, especially if I was already going to be making changes to wiring.
This solution is costly, time consuming, and messsssy! But, the upside is that you can fix/update your electrical to be safer, and more suitable to modern appliances. You can also add low voltage through the house which (if you're a tech nerd like me) may be a nice plus. This will also give you perfectly smooth walls that won't crack and a feeling that your not hiding a mess in your walls.
Hope this is helpful!
Best Answer
You can ask anything you want from the seller. Replace the roof, add a garage, repaint, remove shrubbery, fix a sewer line, replace the fireplace, etc.
Typically the seller will either reject any involvement in such projects (considering them excessive or unnecessary for adequate living conditions), or agree to a lower price to offset your cost of doing it yourself (or by a contractor).
Around here (Oregon), wall hanging holes are considered part of the normal wear and tear of a home. Usually, it isn't much work to spackle the holes, sand, and repaint to get a passably virgin-looking surface.
If there is a serious degradation of the wall surface—beyond normal wear (for example 10 years of missing a dartboard)— you could ask for sheetrock replacement but that would only seem sensible if the wall has widespread major damage evident by its very structure being weakened.