Kitchen finishing

The owners of this West Philadelphia house had some work done in their kitchen several months ago, but never got around to finishing it.  They had their ceiling reframed and new lights installed, but never took care of the wallpaper or the finishing of the ceiling.   The kitchen just needed us.

The drywall installers spackled over the wallpaper, so that had to be removed.  There were also dry erase boards attached to the wall.  After removing them, we found that tiles were removed behind them with the mortar still in place. 

We removed the dry boards with the mortar and plaster behind them while removing the wallpaper everywhere else in the kitchen.  Then we repaired the walls, primed painted, added new baseboards (not pictured), and painted everything white.

Removal of Texture

At some point in the history of this South Philadelphia house, some one decided that it would be a good idea to cover the walls of the living room with a thick heavy texture.  It looked like this all of the room...

The wife and children went out of town for a week and we got to work.  The idea was to scrape the high points off then skim coat the room with some joint compound.  However, this texture was made of mortar or heavy plaster, and it did not come off easily.  The wall section under the stairs had some wallpaper under the texture.  So, the paper came off with the texture.  That small area was not a problem at all.

However, the other walls were not so easy. We tried to remove the texture with very little success.

So, after 2 complete skim coats all of the walls in the living room, sanding, priming and painting, it looked like this...