Skimming

[hellohellohihi]

Just moved into dream forever home and starting to think about doing it up. First is DDs room. There's aertex above the picture rail and in the ceiling and the walls look a tad shabby.

I love that clean look that newly plastered and painted walls have, just looks so much nicer.

And because this is our forever home I want to get it right straight off, not balls it up or do a cheap job now then have to redo in a couple of years because it looks shite.

We'll be doing the decorating ourselves (DH is a carpenter so quite good at DIY) but think we'll need to get someone in for the walls/ceiling. How do we know whether they'll need plastering or skimming? Presumably skimming is cheaper, any idea of cost? It's a decent size double bedroom (no idea on measurements)??

[CharlotteBronteSaurus]

i think we paid about £200 for our double bedroom to be skimmed.

[PigletJohn]

replastering means back to the brick

skimming means a thin coat to make it smooth and flat. but if you have bad cracks they are probably coming from the brickwork and may crack again. Anything loose has to be hacked off.

If it is an old house (1920's is old) then it will probably have lath and plaster ceilings which probably need taking down (before they fall down) but a skilled gang can plasterboard them then skim. if it has started to sag it will probably have broken nibs and will not go flat again.

taking down an old ceiling is extremely dirty and dusty and you would not want to be living in the house or have furniture or carpets down. The builders won't like doing it. Really.

[hellohellohihi]

Thanks pj.

I was worried about being told we'd need to replaster when skimming would actually suffice.

House is in pretty good condition (built circa 1905) just tatty walls and as I mention I love that sleek fresh look.

I guess we just need to get a few quotes in and go from there?

[alcibiades]

Our house was built in the 1830s, so quite old. Just one room (the dining room) had an artex ceiling. We decided to have it skimmed, and the plasterer who did that for us was of the opinion that the ceiling was sound. I'd always had the feeling that the reason the previous owner had artexed the ceiling was a "style" thing, rather than covering up anything.

Fast forward a few years after that, and part of the ceiling fell down because of a slow water leak. There wasn't much in the way of dust because, obviously, it was all damp. But it was lath and plaster, and the plaster was like thick concrete with bits in it. I can well imagine that taking down a whole dry lath and plaster ceiling would be an incredibly dusty matter and best avoided. In fact, the plasterer we then got in to fix the ceiling strongly recommended just patching the ceiling rather than taking the whole thing down.

As for quotes - one that we got for the de-artexing wanted to plasterboard over it and then skim. But we thought that was a lazy fix, so we went with the other quote for scraping off the most prominent bits and then skimming. It took longer but resulted in a lovely smooth finish.