[Janie]

We are redoing our walls in an old farm house. We've stripped the wallpaper, but don't know what the brown paper underneath is. Can anyone help? We think this part of the house was built somewhere in the 1920s. What do I have to do to prepare a wall like this for painting? Thanks for any help you can give.

[bosshogg]

Sounds like the paper backing or size. Size was commonly applied for sealing plastered walls. As long as it's flat and smooth, paper it in the normal way, otherwise fill it with a modern filler allow to dry and paper over this matrix, ditto for old stubborn backing paper...bosshogg