Painting RV Walls

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I’ve always wondered who in their right mind “designed” RV interiors. I mean really, beige upon beige upon beige in every nook and cranny. I understand a need to keep things neutral but beige? Ugg Come on.

So, what to do about it? I’m starting in the bedroom with the, you guessed it, beige headboard, beige window treatments and beige and gold swirly wallpaper. Oh and did I mention that the window treatments were not only beige but three different shades of beige.

In this first, of many posts on our renovations, we’re going to take down the awful blinds, clean up the wallpaper, prep and paint.

In our RV the day/night shades were connected to the beige cornices. We knew we were not keeping the beige, so we decided to take them down all as one unit. Not sure this was the best way to go about it, but it worked for us. The process pretty much destroyed the shades so if you plan to reuse yours, I suggest you remove them first then take down the boxes.

After taking the shades down, we moved on to the headboard. Did I mention it was beige?  Anyway, to remove this headboard I located the screws in the seam between the two fabrics. I had five along the top and one in each bottom corner.

Once they were out, I discovered that thing was also glued to the wall. I knew I’d be covering the wall, so I wasn’t terribly worried about messing up the wallpaper and good thing, because it had a lot of glue and pulling it off took the paper off too. I’ve read that you can heat up the glue with a hair dryer or heat gun and it will loosen up and come off without destroying the wall, but I don’t have the patience for that.

It’s all about the prep

Now on to the prep. Removing the window boxes left some holes needing to be filled. There were also a few places where the wallpaper was wrinkled. This happens for a couple of reasons, one of which can be the dreaded water damage. Knowing that, my first priority was to inspect for any signs of moisture. I did that by heating up the wrinkled area with my trusty heat gun set on low. It melts the glue so you can peel the paper back and have a look. I also poked around a bit to feel for spongy areas. Luckily, I found none. Another reason the wrinkling occurs is temperature swings. When not in use, our RV has been stored on the side of our house. Sometimes in direct sunlight. I found the most wrinkles around the windows on the sunny side of the rig.

Now that I know I don’t have water damage, I feel comfortable repairing the wrinkles where they are small and cutting out the bigger ones. To smooth out wrinkles you’ll need a heat gun and a plastic putty knife. You can use a metal one if you’re careful, but I got better results with plastic. Start by loosening the screws in the trim near the wrinkles. Then heat up the area. Smooth the wrinkles in the direction of the window trim while pressing down to adhere. Press the wallpaper under the trim and retighten the screws.

I’m painting, so I wasn’t terribly worried about smoothing the wrinkles out to preserve the wallpaper. I choose instead to cut them out. To do this, I cut around the wrinkled area then heated up the glue and pulled the wrinkled paper off. While the glue is still warm, push the edges of the surrounding paper down to make sure they’re good and stuck.  

Now before you go any farther, you need to clean and degrease the remaining wallpaper. There are lots of products on the market for this but I use the tried and true TSP or trisodium phosphate. Mix it according to the directions and using a scrub sponge, scrub down the walls and anywhere else you intend to paint. Once you’ve done that you’ll need to rinse by going over the area again with clean water and a clean sponge.

Once that dries, I use spackling and fill the holes left from the window valances and level out any areas where I removed wallpaper. I like the kind of spackle that starts off pink then turns white when it’s dry.

When it’s dry and I’m happy with the results, I sand the entire wall. Making sure that it looks smooth and that there isn’t a ridge where the wallpaper was removed. Sanding the whole wall also roughs up the wallpaper surface to give the primer something to hang on to.  Wipe down everything with a tack cloth. (note, a damp cloth can be used if you didn’t use spackle) Next, I taped just like when painting in a sticks and bricks house.

If you’ve searched “how to paint RV walls”, I’m sure you’ve seen reviews for different primers to use. I chose Gripper primer/sealer by Glidden. It was recommended to me by a professional painter friend so that’s what I went with. It took two coats of primer to cover the lovely swirls in the wallpaper.

I allowed it to dry overnight then painted with regular interior wall paint. There’s so much brown in the bedroom cabinets, that I’m not painting, I chose plain white for the walls to lighten it up in there.

I’m really happy with how it turned out. There were a couple places that were hard to get to, like on the side of the nightstands and around the slide. But overall it wasn’t too bad and since the room is so small, it didn’t take very long.

If you’ve painted your walls or have any other suggestions or questions, we’d love to hear about it in the comments below.