How to wash walls

[Liebkuchen]

Made it!! I'm in Yantai and settling in well. No class until the 15th due to freshman military training so enjoying the time to set up home. Not yet getting much language study done as currently have a cold and feel shoddy. Anyhow, to business:

The walls in my apartment are rather 'grubby'. The doors seem to be gloss paint so should be fine to wipe with a damp sponge. But my Chinese student guide was horrified at the thought of me doing the same on the painted walls. She mentioned something about rubbing paper on them to lift the marks? Any suggestions?

[imron]

Wall hangings and paintings :-)

Maps of china and vocabulary posters work too.

[roddy]

I would try a dry cloth. A wet one is likely to remove all the paint, quite possibly the plaster, and out there in the sticks you may well find some of the brick-work coming away.

Take a dark piece of clothing and rub it along the wall - see how easily the paint brushes off? Bet you wish you'd used an old rag now, instead of your favourite little black dress.

[WestTexas]

There's something funky going on with many of the walls in this country. They seem to be covered in fine white powder that comes off if you brush on them. I do wall squats as part of my workout. These are where you put your thighs at a 90-degree angle and your back to the wall and hold it. In many different places I have come away with white powdery stuff on my shirt and sweat pants. I am not sure what exactly it is.

[rezaf]

Before I used to live in a dormitory and my wall was pretty moldy. I used bleach to kill them.

[anonymoose]

Just shut your eyes and think of England (or Scotland).

[roddy]

"They seem to be covered in fine white powder that comes off if you brush on them. "

The technical term is 'cheap paint', I believe.

[Matty]

You've made me think of and look at my walls again ><

At least my wall paint doesn't come off, but I've found no way of cleaning it, I'd certainly like to find one though.

[imron]

I'd certainly like to find one though.

Like I said, wall hangings, paintings and maps are great for this sort of thing. Especially maps of China or the world which you can pick up for a few kuai in any Xinhua bookstore and will cover half the wall. If you leave them up long enough (i.e. over a year), then when you take them down, you'll magically find the sections of the walls that were covered are now cleaner than the other parts

[abcdefg]

Congratulations on your safe arrival. I enjoyed the "Little Red Riding Hood" video on your blog.

[joshuawbb]

Same with the white walls in my current apartment regarding powder. I so much as brush up against them and get powdered-paint over my clothes, touch them and get powder even in my ultra-short fingernails.

Wall-hangings are great and I have two to go up, but it seems the only way to do that is by hammering nails in the wall. I bought some adhesive hooks and should have realised this, but as soon as they touch the wall they stick to the powdery paint rather than the actual wall. The paint covers the adhesive, adhesive is no more, hook is unusable. Not cool. I could shave off a square patch of the paint first, I suppose...

[jbradfor]

Just shut your eyes and think of England (or Scotland).

She was asking for advice on cleaning walls, not for her wedding night.

[Lu]

I would try a dry cloth. A wet one is likely to remove all the paint, quite possibly the plaster, and out there in the sticks you may well find some of the brick-work coming away.

This happened when I tried to clean my wall before painting them (yes I painted my wall). Back home I was taught to first clean a wall with special detergent so that the paint holds better. When I asked for this stuff at the do-it-yourself store, the story guys had no idea what I was talking about, so I made do with dishwashing detergent. On my first swipe a layer of white came off. I proceeded cleaning very gently, but when I started painting, sometimes thin layers of white would come off on the roller. So I painted very carefully too.

Now that I think of it, the most thorough way of getting clean walls again might be to just paint them over.