What is the best way to remove tile adhesive from plasterboard?

[jonny_cinnamon]

Hi Everyone

I am currently refitting my kitchen. I have started by removing the tiles from the walls but the plasterboard is now a mess with patches/lumps of tile adhesive still stuck to it. All the the tiles have been removed by bolster chisel and as you will all know, the bare plasterboard is now a mess and I need it to be clean before I can start putting the new tiles up.

The problems I have are as follows:

The walls in my house are not standard Timber Stud partition walls with plasterboard fixed to the timber frame. If they were then I could just remove the plasterboard and put new plasterboard up. The walls are paramount partition walls, they have a timber header plate at the top and a timber footer plate at the bottom with a cardboard grid system in between. The plasterboard is then glued to the cardboard grid. It is like an eggbox cardboard system. I can't remove the plasterboard as it will rip the whole wall down. The house was built in 1970 and this was the walls the construction company choose to use which is now not practical.

What is the quickest and tideist way of removing the tile adhesive?

Last year I refitted the bathroom and I had the same problem with the tile adhesive mess on the plasterboard. Then, I used an electric sander to sand the tile adhesive off which is time consuming and creates alot of dust. I don't want to do this again as we now have a 6 month old baby in the house and I don't want to create alot of dust in the house. I have been chipping the tile adhesive off the plaster board today but again, this is time consuming so what advice does anyone else have?

Hope someone can help

Thanks

Jonny.

 

[Mike]

What about smoothing/skimming the walls.

tapatalk on my HTC

 

[suave]

welcome! if its tubbed adhesive it will soften wen wet or steamed

 

[White Room]

Hi and welcome to the forum....

 

[jonny_cinnamon]

Hi Mike,

Yes, I could skim the walls, thanks for the advice. Its just that I have not skimmed walls myself before so I am not confident doing that

Hi Suave

Thanks for your advice. I will try using a wallpaper steamer on the walls tomorrow and hopefully the tile adhesive will soften.

 

[Rizzle from the Portizzle]

before steaming try pasting wall paper paste on the adhesive make sure this is stiff spray to keep wett when needed this allows the water to soak in to the adhesive this has worked on some old adhesive after acouple of hours try scaping the walls hope this helps

 

[kendo1]

A good two handed scraper works well, something about 12 to 18 inches long with a 6 inch head.
Get some welly behind it.
I'd still cover the door to the kitchen with a sheet to stop the dust and debris spreading to the rest of the house.

 

[AliGage]

Pull the plasterboard down. There's a timber frame in there somewhere. It's usually about 2" or 50mm timber, but there's not a lot of it. Break out some of the card inside and screw in some more timbers. Re-board using feather edge plasterboard and fill the joins with an easy filler.

 

[swanman]

Thats what i would do take the plasterboard down and start again

Well worth it in the end

Good Luck

 

[widler]

Pull the plasterboard down. There's a timber frame in there somewhere. It's usually about 2" or 50mm timber, but there's not a lot of it. Break out some of the card inside and screw in some more timbers. Re-board using feather edge plasterboard and fill the joins with an easy filler.

if they are the same as ive seen before,there is no timber frame in there,just cardboard.

did some council houses years ago,when plasterboard was taken off the bloody wall could be pushed through,its a bit like metal stud,when no plasterboard on they are as wobbly as bambi and when boarded they go solid (ish)

 

[kendo1]

I've found both. Sometimes just cardboard, sometimes there are battons of sorts- nothing to write home about though.

All you can do is investigate.

 

[jonny_cinnamon]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for your posts & advice. My house is an ex-council house and unfortunatley there is no timber frame inside the walls, just cardboard. I know this because from doing other work in the house. It is not practical at all.

I have been using a scraper like kendo1 mentioned to remove the tile adhesive but I thought I would put a post on here to see what other peoples opinions were. My hands are taking a battering using a scraper!!!!

I'm afraid I haven't got round to using a steamer yet due to looking after our wee boy today but hopefully I'll get round to it tomorrow.

Thanks again for everyone's help. Its much appreciated.

 

[kendo1]

Another option is to put up another partition, or maybe batten out from the existing wall and then board it.
You'll lose some space from the bathroom, but not much. Maybe 60mm?

Or don't bother scraping and put up backerboard.

 

[jmc1234]

Came accross the same problem today.... remove the nails from top and bottom, cut/score 2 ft squares with stanley knife, then I used a plunge cutter to make a hole were i could get a grip of the plasterboard and then just pulled it off while using the other hand to stop the wall caving in. Damaged about 5% of the cardboard grid which doesnt really matter as i have put some extra timeber supports in and fixed new plasterboard to these. Good luck with it....