Paint is peeling off in sheets right down to the drywall!

I recently bought a house and I did notice that the paint on the living room ceiling was peeling and the sellers said when they had the entire house drywalled that they didnt clean the drywall so the paint didnt stick and was now peeling. Well, now that Im living there I have noticed that this is the case in every room. The paint comes off in sheets and the dry wall is exposed and it takes the first layer of drywall with it. What caused this and how do I repair this so it doesn't happen when I re-paint all the rooms? It looks to me that the drywall was not primed? The paint that comes off is very very thin.

 

Welcome to the forums.

Not sure I'm following - you say the paint is coming off then it sounds like the paper is coming off the gypsum on the sheet rock. What's actually left behind?

 

If the primer or paint was applied over dust it won't adhere well but it should adhere in some areas as the drywall dust isn't normally constant over the entire wall. When this is the case the paint will come off in smaller pieces and will not remove any joint compound or plaster. The fix would be to aggressively sand the walls, skim coat as needed with j/c, sand, dust, prime and paint.

Pics might help us better understand what you have going on - http://www.doityourself.com/forum/el...-pictures.html

 

Mitch17, the white paper covering the sheetrock is coming with it. What is left is brown paper.

 

marksr, from all the research I have been doing this seems to be the case. I will take some pics tonight and post them.

 

OK, so there's still paper on the drywall - that's good.

I would remove all of it and then let's re-evaluate whether you need to sling some mud at that point (best guess is you will) or if you can just prime and paint.

 

I'm not sure what the white paper is Drywall is ground up gypsum sandwiched between 2 sheets of paper, the face paper is a light grey and the backside is brown. Look forward to seeing the pics.

 

I can tell straight away they just didn't use primer. See it too often and theres no way the drywall papers coming off unless its a moisture issue. just threw the flat straight at the ceiling and called it done. Guaranteed!