Artex Nightmare

[SammySays]

We have recently moved to a new home and have been full steam ahead on the renovation front. Having replaced the bathroom, kitchen, all of the flooring downstairs as well as some electrical work, we have run out of money. There is still some terrible artex on the walls in the downstairs hall, up the stairs and in the hall upstairs. There is no pattern to it at all it has just been slapped on.

Does anyone know how I can fix this myself? The ridges are too deep to be concealed with a thick lining paper but I can't currently afford a plasterer and I imagine it will be some years until I can. Any ideas?

Do you have a picture? Is it the whole wall?

It's on several whole walls. Just took a few pictures but it's all in the downstairs hall, up the stairway and then in the upstairs hall. As you can see it's horrible ☹️

Recently had a survey done and it reveals that artex applied pre 2000 contains asbestos and should only be remved by experts.

Listen to crimsonlake.

It needs to be skimmed - but the good news is that it's quite a bit cheaper than plastering, and hopefully less messy. The right person will happily do just 1/2 walls at a time if money is tight.

Ok that's not as bad as I thought it would be.

Is there any possibility there is asbestos in it? If not, I would sand it down as much as possible - use a sander and cover everything because the dust will be horrendous. Then seal it and put lining paper or wall paper over the top. You can get a product you can put on yourself to smooth it out. I forget the name but if you google artex filler you should find it.

If you have a period property you could use something like anaglypta which is designed to go over uneven walls or even add panelling at the bottom and paper on top.

Skimming would be fine if your budget will stretch to that - there's also no worries about asbestos then either.

Looks just like my hallway..... 😀
Kept meaning to do something about it but five years on we still haven't. I'm so used to it now I can just ignore it. We plan to have it plastered over. At some point. 😀

Think you can steam it off but you need to be sure there is no asbestos in the artex - you can get it tested for about £60 for 1 sample (which was an easy kit with everything in it as I used this recently)

Just skim it - that's what we did. We tried sanding but it was a nightmare and was never going to look smooth. Skimming was very quick and easy and didn't cost as much as we'd thought.

I wouldn’t even try.

When we bought our house it was a paean to artex. The hallway and stairs had several different ‘styles’ in it. Skimming it was the first thing we had done and cost £400 and was worth every penny.

You can't steam off artex.

I assumed the op meant skimming when she said plastering but if not, skimming is quick and not that expensive. We skimmed half our house when we moved in. The rest is going in the refurb.

To be honest I thought skimming was plastering, I didn't realise that was a cheaper option!

I'm not confident there's no asbestos in it, if I had to guess I would say it probably does so no I don't plan to sand anything. Regardless of my health I have a 2yr old and wouldn't risk hers.

Any ideas on how much skimming would cost? I've seen home skim kits online that say you just roll on and smooth on yourself- any thoughts on if that's fairly easy to do? We are pretty much out of money now so any DIY option is best for us!

It's really not that bad, I'd just paint it with a very flat matt paint.

How much it costs depends where you live. Plaster itself is cheap so it's the labour cost that bumps it up. Where I live you'd be looking at about £250-400 depending how big the space is.

TBH I'd save up and get an expert in. It's a big area and those fillers don't have great reviews ime.

Getting a plasterer to skim over the walls is the best option.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts. I guess I need to get some quotes from local plasterers! Hoping they will accept tea and smiles as payment- who needs money anyway...