How To Get Old Ceiling Tile Glue Off Hardboard

[abrogard]

I don't know if you call it 'hardboard' in the USA but that's what we call it here: a shiny on one side brown stuff made of compressed something or other. Very cheap.

Used on ceilings and generally painted over. This time I've found a place where they glued those very light foam plastic ceiling tiles to it. A couple came off, can't be matched nowadays (maybe twenty years old) so they all have to come off.

I find big globs of some brown glue under there. If I can get it off easy then we can paint over a couple of times and all's good.

Power sanding seems like the go but I just wonder about how it'd cut through that shiny surface on the hardboard and that in turn would maybe show through the paint somehow.

Any ideas?

 

[Dan]

Chipboard is what we call the thicker stuff. It's compressed wood. Then hardboard we call the stuff you find in the back of flat pack wardrobes and the likes. And often used (incorrectly) below vinyl flooring etc.

Can you not just pull the boarding off and put new plasterboard on and skim it? Have a nice new ceiling then and would be quite cheap to do.

 

[abrogard]

Hi, thanks. Yes, we can replace it. Thought it was worth asking though.