The little Vicar's house at church was probably built in the 1950's. The dining room and kitchen ceiling is getting covered in cracks. Upon investigating I pulled back what appears to be really thick paper from one of the cracks. What I saw underneath looks like a drywall ceiling where the joints were never skimmed with compound, taped and mudded over. Instead, it appears they just covered the entire drywall ceiling with a thick, heavy paper. The ceiling isn't textured, just painted. I've never encountered that or heard of this before. I'm guessing the only thing to do would be to strip it all off and do the joints the normal way.

 

Where specifically are the cracks? Do the cracks follow the seams of the sheetrock underneath?

You can strip the ceiling and give it a traditional tape and mud job. After the old wall paper is off you could apply a new wallpaper. There are some textured ones and others specifically to resist or hide cracks.

 

Yes, the cracks are where the drywall joints are in the ceiling. I can see they were never mudded over with joint compound and tape. I don't know why anyone would have done things that way. I've never heard of that technique before.

 

Drywall wasn't real popular back in 50s. Plaster with drywall lath was. Is it possible it's a drywall lath house and for whatever reason they skipped the plaster and went straight to wallpaper in those rooms?

 

I determined that some kind of repair was done in the attic which required them to remove a section of the ceiling and replace it with dry wall over the dining area. The rest of the house is done in drywall as well as there are some joint issues in different areas of the house. Whoever repaired it didn't do a very good job. We removed much of the wallpaper on the ceiling and taped, plastered and skim coated/sanded it. Turned out okay. Thanks.