What on earth can you do with Artex ceilings??

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I hate the stuff. I honestly think that every single house I've lived in has had various incarnations of the stuff - swirly like philly cheese, spikey like Christmas cake icing, undulating like - well, I always thought the Artex effect on the bedroom ceiling of my old flat reminded me of intestines.

We have spikey Artex currently (bequeathed by previous owners) and it always looks grubby. Cobwebs get stuck on the points, as do fragments of the feather dusters we use to try and remove them. I had some success with a stiff broom when we were cleaning up to put the house on the market, but it means thousands of fragments of the spikes falling on the brush-ee, an instant hairwash and vacuum (me and the floor), and if you're unlucky, a trip to the doctor to remove the bits from your eye.

Really, it's ghastly stuff. Whatever possessed people, etc.

We're hoping to move into a house that, yet again, has the stuff on all the ceilings. Not a big fan of polystyrene tiles. What else can you do to get rid of it or disguise it? Can it ever be skimmed over by someone with, say, a PhD in Advanced Plastering?

Oh GOD circle swirls with spikes in the middle. That's what ours were like.

I grew up in a beautiful Victorian house which was bastardised by my gran in the late 70s - artex every where, including up the chimney breasts (why?).

She also removed all teh deep skirting boards, dado rails, smashed the stain glass windows, threw away all the panel doors and replaced them with nmodern ones, got rid of the bannister rails upstairs and boarded up the ones downstairs and removed all the firplaces.

She was the Lawrnece Llewellyn Bowen of Ilfracombe.

LPW - did the poor bloke even know to test for asbestos in the UK? I would happily do it myself, but I don't fancy dying from asbestos exposure!

GOML - oh god, you could cry couldn't you! I also rather fancied having a go at plastering (just at home, not as a job) - but a 'quick lesson in plastering' at a Home Show, put me straight on that one!!!

We had artex in the front hallway. DS picked at a bit of the ceiling (could reach from the staircase) and a whole piece of ceiling artex just pulled away. We have a nice smooth ceiling under it, just need to tidy up the edges and repaint.

We had artex in some rooms and polystyrene tiles in all the others, and when we took the tiles off the ceilings were all cracked and sooty underneath (so presumably the artexed ones would have been the same). Plasterer said they might also have distemper paint on and it wasn't certain that they'd work out well just plastering over, so in the end we boarded them all before plastering. Glad we did it now as we know they're totally solid. The boarding cost about £600 for a three bed semi (every room except landing, I think). I was terrified the ceilings would seem lower but it's so minimal you'd never know.

Sorry, £600 was just the boarding. Plasterer came after that.

ChippingIn - no, we didn't even think of it because it is a relatively new house. You don't happen to know roughly when they would have stopped using asbestos, do you?!

Well my parents had 'spiky' artex on the hallway ceilings of their old house. They always said it looked like Santa's Grotto. They tried to hack it off, but that didn't work, so they ended up putting chipboard over it to make a new, flat ceiling and then painting that.

The ginormous lumps of artex all over the walls they managed to whack off with a chisel and mallet (took weeks) and then replastered and painted.

The previous owner's daughter prided herself as an amateur interior designer and had tried to create a 'swiss villa' look (in a tiny terraced house in Sheffield FFS) it really looked awful but the previous owners thought it looked fab!

Anything before the 80's will almost certainly have asbestos in it - during the 80's they started using other things, but a lot of asbestos was still being used, it was rarely used in the 90's...

Oh and the worst thing in that house was that the artex on the walls really protruded a couple of inches from the walls, so if you walked down the stairs holding the handrail, you always ended up with artex banging up under your fingernail, or wacking you on the funny bone.

Like I said, awful.

Hmmmmm. We're 1989, I think. I wonder how we could find out.

Having said that, the whole house has been de-artexed now, so what has happened to us and the Slovaks has already happened ...

Shudder ...

Our old neighbours had a hankering to live in Spain, but as they couldn't, thought they would turn their 3bd terrace into a Spanish House and put in arches, artex and lovely spanish colours...

They then went to live in spain and now live in a very 'English' looking house there

The new neighbours clearly hadn't ever removed artex before and had no idea of what they were taking on (luckily recently done so no asbestos risk), so he set to... months of chipping away at the stuff, they have decided to live with some of it and plaster over the rest... he has aged.

We had the spiky stuff in the dining room, thankfully DS's Godfather is a plasterer and I am now admiring a smooth ceiling.

at the "Swiss villa" and the Spanish house.

The previous owner of our house nailed a board over the spindles on the 1930s banisters, covered it with a thick and uneven 'rustic' looking layer of artex/plaster, and then carved 'blocks' into it and painted grey lines to look like mortar in ye olde stone wall.

"The previous owner of our house nailed a board over the spindles on the 1930s banisters, covered it with a thick and uneven 'rustic' looking layer of artex/plaster, and then carved 'blocks' into it and painted grey lines to look like mortar in ye olde stone wall."

HAHAHAHAHA!!! Oh that's fabulous - we need an MN gallery of "crimes against decor"

We have just had an offer accepted on a new house with (I think) no artex, but absolutely grim tiles on the ceiling in the third bedroom. I have no idea how you would get these off - I am hoping they are polystyrene and will just peel away (optimistic? moi?) but suspect they may be hiding something even grimmer.

As an aside, we had told the estate agent we were keen on period features and he showed us round the property pointing out all the "original hand rail!" "original doors!" in a meaningful voice.

I nearly wet myself when he showed us into the third bedroom and announced "Original ceiling tiles" In, presumably, genoowine 1890s polystyrene. [snort]

polystyrene tiles come off generally without difficulty though depends on the glue used (can involve scrubbing bits of polystyrene blobs stuck in glue) - what you find underneath is usually a damaged/ cracked/ artex (!) ceiling that the tiles were put there to hide.

on the up side, the polystyrene rarely hides damp as that would have soaked through and stained them too ....

I have just got one of my hideous ceilings skimmed over and coving put up. It's flat and lovely now, and such a relief. One down, 5 to go!! My plasterer charged £80 to skim and the same to do the coving, on a different day.

I think surveyors ought to have a duty to point out any material they think might contain asbestos, so you know before you buy the house.

Eandh, we are going to have to have the men in to remove some asbestos - don't suppose you'd like to tell more about how it was done at your house? Did you get it done through the local council?

LPW - my 'Shudder' was aimed at QoD by the way, not you The chances are good, that in 1989 yours would have been an asbestos free plaster and as you say, it's too late now anyway, so really, there's nothing you can do about it, even if it was asbestos, so there's no point in worrying about it or in trying to find anything out... your exposure to it would have been quite low as you weren't actually doing the work yourself, but I do feel sorry for this guy if he is doing a lot of it, without knowing the risk he is taking I hope someone has told him to get it checked first. To do it safely you really need specialist equipment and not just a cheapy breathing mask and white coveralls.

TYV - that's very unusual these days, when there is a law against agents saying things that aren't true - what a total idiot!! I hope your 'genoowine' 1890's tiles are easy to remove and aren't hiding anything too awful - perhaphs they just liked the look .

EAP - that was cruel.... let TYV live in a state of optimism until she's moved in at least

Interesting thread. We have a variety of patterns and luckily most of it doesn't stand too proud of the ceiling and it is only upstairs.

Just wondered, someone (a decorator) suggested that the easiest solution is to artex over artex.

So instead of using plaster, to use artex and have it smooth. Is this utter nonsense? He said that the plaster doesn't always adhere to the artex whereas artex will.

If you've had your ceiling plastered, did the plasterer prime the artex in some way? Is this decorator talking nonsense?

oh my god, I've just seen that I typed 'Swiss villa' I actually meant Spanish villa. please excuse my pregnant and very hot malfunctioning brain!

oh I don't know, Swiss villa is quite descriptive!

The "swiss" sort of conjures up that snowy peaks icing you get on Christmas cakes and the "villa" speaks for itself.

And finally the hideous bastardisation of the two words sums up the decorative philosophy of the Artex weilding homeowner

Chipping, I did think about gently pointing out to the EA that he was talking shite and putting his firm at risk of a lawsuit - but I think he was just young and a wally, not intentionally misleading us. He also sent us another set of details which described the property as having "original sash windows and period fireplace". The "original" sash windows were quite clearly modern double-glazed replacements and the "period" fireplace was a not very good reproduction gas fire . Still, I suppose in his defence, he didn't say which period...

visitor thanks you just gave me a great laugh!

Oh I loved the Swiss villa!

tyv our polystyrene tiles came off really easily, it was quite good fun. It was less fun contemplating what lay beneath, and there were some blobs of glue.

fabblueraincoat it was interesting company were allocated by insurance company (they travelled 2 hours to get to ours!)

They had huge lorry and a trailer thing on the back that had 2 doors marked Clean/Used, they then taped up the upstairs bedroom/bathroom doors and then attached huge thick polythene on the door in lounge that leads to dining room and through porch and windows but with a hole for vacumn thing,at this point DD2 and I left for 4 hours, came back to no ceiling/conving and no mess at all as everything is sucked up through the filter thing. The men looked like wearing space suits with red boiler suits things and stuff over face etc (didnt see what they had on in the room only before and after.

If you are near Kent/Essex I can recommend the company (they are based in Essex but we are in Kent)

ChippingIn - he's a pretty savvy guy and safety conscious about lots of stuff so I think he would know what he is doing. He's become a mate of ours, so I might just gently check with him next time we see him.