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One of the hassles of buying a house is dealing with the old or ugly design choices the previous owner made. One of these design choices I had been living with for a while was a marble design paneling in the front stairway and foyer.
 The paneling had a somewhat spooky effect when you saw it in person; with out too much imagination, the patterns looked like various horned animals – so finally it had to go. The easy part of the job was ripping it off the walls; it had been glued on and the glue had let go of the paneling, causing it to  bubble out – yet another reason to get rid of it.
After removing the paneling, I was left with a wall covered with black, tar-looking construction glue that was still well-adhered to the walls. Reading up on how to get rid of the glue confirmed my fears that it would not be easy.
I have an older house so much of the walls are made of plaster and lath, while some have been replaced with drywall. Of the information I collected, I was told scraping the walls  and heating the glue was the best method of removal. I found that goop remover did seem to dissolve the black glue, but was smelly  and more mess than it was worth. So scrape I did, and it took quite a bit of it off. I was still left with a wall with lots of black stuff on it, but at least now the wall was smoother. On the sheetrock walls, the scraping also took off some of the paper although that turned out ok in the end.
The next step was to skim coat a layer of spackling mud over the wall and remaining black junk to try and cover it. I ended up putting three coats of mud on the wall and sanding in-between each of them. Once the last coat had dried, I gave it a really good sanding and it was time to paint. At this point, aside  from the large amount of white dust and black stuff all over the floor, things were starting to look good. The last step was to paint everything with a paint, which is meant to cover mildew stains and other discolorations.
So now I have white walls, and once I am done redoing my kitchen and possibly scuffing the wall as I carry stuff up and down the stairs, I will put the final coat of paint on. This was a bigger project than I wanted, but in the end it was worth it to get  rid of the paneling.
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Re: How I got rid of the horned animals in my stairway
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