Help! Opened a can of worms with house decoration

[anxiousowl]

Help! I'm feeling overwhelmed by my new(ish) house and need advice. It has needed so much so far that it has eaten away our savings (new shower/ensuite, new boiler, decoration etc). I have done some of the more straightforward decoration myself.

However, I ended up removing the wallpaper from the dining room, which was peeling/ripped in places anyway. I've now taken it all off, but it has left uneven walls, where the undercoat of paint has come away with the paper in large strips in various places. I've just had a decorator in who recommended getting it skimmed as it would be a better finish and cheaper than painting/filling/sanding/painting again etc, and I do agree. He said that papering on top wouldn't give a great finish.

However, in the longer term, we also need to replace the very worn and dirty carpet in the room, ideally with either laminate or engineered wood. This will need the skirting boards to be taken off. If we get this plastered/skimmed now, then would we take the skirtings off? If we don't, then I imagine the plaster will be damaged when we come to do the floor, perhaps in 2 years time? Or if we do take the skirtings off for the skim, will it still be damaged by taking the skirtings off later? (I should have asked him this but I didn't think until after).

I feel like I've opened a can of worms. Our livingroom also needs done (same ripped/peeling paper, carpet etc) however, this is a much larger room and also needs the fireplace removed/replaced at the same time (with impact on flooring/walls). So our next job was to save up enough to get this done in one go - so the floor would be the same from one room to the next.

We don't really have the budget for anything much at the moment. We could afford the replaster (estimated at £250), however, flooring etc and definitely the livingroom is out of budget (estimate about £6k between fire, floor, plastering etc).

How should we approach this? I wish I had just left the old paper where it was, but it was driving me crazy seeing it.

I think you are wise to get the walls skimmed now rather than do a temporary botch job. When we moved into our house many years ago we ruined three bedroom’s walls removing hideous waterproof wallpaper. We then applied textured paint, then covered with lining paper and painted a few years later. It was a rush to get the bedrooms decorated as we had three young children. We put up with the walls for years before gradually getting them skimmed which we should have done in the first place.

Regarding the floor, you can lay laminate and then buy a special strip which goes around the edges, next to the skirting. It looks fine and is certainly a lot cheaper than removing skirting boards first. In a few years you may decide to have carpet anyway.

The previous poster seems to know what she’s talking about, I just came to give sympathy.
Doing My house reminds me of one of those puzzles where you slide the tiles about to create the picture, and it’s almost impossible to find the right order. It’s so overwhelming.

Is it a period property with original skirting? If so you might ruin it if you remove it, but if you'd be removing it anyway when you do the floor or you're not bothered about keeping the skirting it's irrelevant.

Ideally I'd take the skirting off for plastering, it's easier for the plasterer and usually a better finish. I prefer laminate / wooden floors to run under skirtings, imo having a trim looks a bit rubbish. The ideal would be doing both rooms at the same time skirting off, walls skimmed and painted then new flooring.

£250 is quite cheap to have a full room skimmed, is it quite a small room?