How do you remove drywall mud from a wood column without gouging the wood underneath?

Question

I moved into an old warehouse and someone covered up thes beautiful wood columns with drywall mud and I'm afraid a scraper might damage the wood underneath.

Answer 1

Drywall MUD is exactly that. Mud. Scrape off what you can with a scraper but when you get closer to the wood us a wet sponge and wipe away as much as you can. It will come off with water and a little elbow grease. The other thing is that once you remove as much as you can you will still see some of the mud that has settled in the grain of the wood that you will have to sand out and possibly re-stain the wood back to a fine finish. Try not to use a course sand paper. Stick with Fine or Medium grain. Good luck, I hope this works for you.

Answer 2

The paneling was installed one of three ways: 1 -- the correct way is to nail the paneling on top of drywall. If this is the case, it is a very simple thing to take the paneling down, then prep and paint the drywall. The downside is that your moldings will no longer fit and your electric outlets will stick out 1/4" beyond the wall surface -- you'll have to adjust the junction boxes accordingly and replace the moldings. 2 -- some people, for whatever reason, glued paneling to drywall. If this is the case, you will ruin the drywall when you remove the paneling. But that's not the end of the world -- you can put 1/4" drywall on top of the ruined drywall. This will give you a fresh surface to work with, and you won't change the wall thickness as you would if the paneling was installed correctly. With either of these first two installation methods, you can resurface the paneling. Sand the gloss off the surface, use joint compound to fill in the grooves, then put on a textured finish or a textured paintable wallpaper. 3 -- Paneling was installed directly over the studs, with no drywall behind it. This will have to come down, and standard drywall put in. The paneling will have too much flex to hold any kind of resurfacing. There is an upside to this though -- removing the paneling will expose the wall cavities, making it very easy to wire in wall sconces, surround sound speakers, additional outlets, etc. But yeah, you will have to install new drywall.

Answer 3

How To Remove Drywall Mud

Answer 4

Sandpaper or wet the mud with water and wipe it off. Either of these may take a while if there's lots of mud on the column but they both work.

Answer 5

Best thing Ive ever used is warm water on a rag and just wipe until gone or try using a plastic light switch cover as a scraper it shouldn't scratch it

Answer 6

you can use a soft wood to scrape away the mud, something like a wood shim works fine.

Answer 7

You must use warm or hot water with a litter liquild soap or ect.With sponges or towel cloth that you normally dry off from when you take a bath.