It's all my fault. I let my son touch up a bedroom for a guest that has decided not to show up. There were some spots on the walls that he decided to "touch-up". Instead of using sheet rock mud, he went and bought spackle (ugh), then didn't sand it smooth, and painted over it (not to mention that he didn't stir the paint well enough, so I need to paint the room before Thanksgiving...

So, now I have latex paint (rubber cover) over this lump. Yuck.

Every time I've tried to fix something like this, I've never had much luck removing the latex paint. Sand paper immediately clogs. I suppose I could just cut out the section and patch it with some extra sheet rock but that seems like overkill.

Any suggestions / tricks?

Thanks
cg

 

Try this. I have done it when I patch sheetrock in order to get flat patches. I cut the face paper around the hole and peel it off then when I tape the joint it is flat. For some reason I don't know it seems like the new rock in the patch is always just a little recessed so taking the face off the existing leaves it flat when I tape it. That is background. Fry cutting the area around your bad spot and peeling it all off with the face paper. Then patch it with quick setting mud. This is less radical than taking the whole bad spot out of the wall and will eliminate the hump. Haven't tried what I describe but it might work.
Or use a scraper and scrape off the high spots and then refinish as needed and prime and paint. Might have to paint the whole wall.

 

Often you can scrape off the worst of it and then skim coat over it. The joint compound is easy to sand, once it looks right - prime and paint.

 

yeah, I expected him to use joint compound.

The slice and dice is the way I am going to go, I'll try it on one spot.

 

One tip, after you have the patch sanded smooth and it feels ok, use 2-3 coats of primer with a heavy roller feathered into the surrounding wall by 6-12".

The roller will ad texture to that now very smooth flat spot. If you paint without the rolled on primer that flat spot will stand out like a sore thumb!

 

I do acres of plaster and drywall and stucco patches. I don't paint. I hate to paint. I might do a little of my own painting but I prefer to hire it done. But everybody paints and not everyone is a painter. I advise people when I finish a patch always to prime the patch then paint the patch and maybe paint it again in order to get the same amount of paint on the patch as on the wall. Then maybe that is good enough. It probably is not good enough so then they paint the whole wall or the whole lid or the whole room. But the advice to get some paint on the patch is very good advice.

 

Marq1 - Outstanding suggestion! You are correct sir.

tightcoat - I agree. But he got "happy" with patching and painting, and now I have all 4 walls adorned with this mess. I'm painting the room again, no other way to fix it. Same color, so no worries about cut in.

I'm going to fix one wall this weekend to see how it goes. Thanks for the suggestions.