Anyone ever had artex ceilings smoothed over?

[Mumma1992]

Me and DH finally went from renting to owning in January (yay!) and bought a home built around 2000 so not old but not a new build.

Aside from the bathrooms and kitchen, the ceilings are artex and we both would like them smoothed as we don’t really like the pattern look from artex.

We aren’t looking to get this done now, due to the pandemic but we have some concerns mainly because DH and DS are both asthmatic and we have a 1 year old dog. We know getting rid of artex ceilings would bring lots of dust and my worry is DH, DS and dog being affected by it.

DH parents have 2 spare rooms so have offered to house us while the dust settles, but I was wondering how much dust is there? How hard is it to clean? How long does it take to settle? Would an air Purifier help?

Apologies for so many questions! Would just like as much knowledge regarding this as it is major work to be done

Just have them skimmed, much easier.

Yup - skim them

We had ours plasterboarded and then skimmed.

They can't always be skimmed, it depends on the artex and materials used. We had to have ours replastered, it's a messy job which will take around 1-2 weeks and it there will be a lot of dust, but not for too long. If you get it done over the summer period, it will dry quicker, around 3 days per ceiling or less, depends on the size/ventilation.

Yeah just bury the potential ACM so unsuspecting trades can drill into it in the future and expose themselves.

Definitely skim if you can. Our plasterer scraped the artex first to remove any bits that stuck out , then skimmed over and managed to do a thin enough cover not to lose the edge of the coving.

@R1R2 The op said the house was built in 2000 so very unlikely to contain any asbestos.

Just get them skimmed

We had ours skimmed. It cost about £70 for a medium sized room.

Built in2000 so there won't be an asbestos risk like the older stuff. A plasterer will flick off any pointy bits and skim it for you. Less than an hour for an average room and hardly any dust. We paid 300 for a single room but when we had several done at once it went down significantly, so if you can cope with clearing the space you can get a floor done in a day.

@R1R2 the reason I mentioned when the property was built was to avoid those types of comments! We also double checked when we had the survey done, no asbestos found

IMO hires some plasterers to skim over walls and ceilings of a house that I did up. There is actually quite a lot of dust from the bags of plaster powder, which they mix up on site. Make sure that they make up the plaster mix outside. Sounds obvious my but my crappy plasterers mixed it up in the hallway and I was vacuuming for weeks.

How thick are the swirls?

I hired some plasterers- don’t know where IMO came from?!!!

@VanillaSugarr not thick at all I would just say! Some pictures you can’t even see the pattern in certain lights but the pattern is there.

Does skimming create as much dust as plastering or is it less? As much as I love my in laws I love my house and don’t want to be staying away too long!

I think it depends on the skill of the plasterer. You should be able to clean it up quite easily if they’ve been careful. Damp cloths and a decent vacuum cleaner should do the trick.

Our plasterer mixed it outside and skimmed over so hardly any dust at all.

We didn't have much dust when the plasterer has been. I did have to dust the rooms next to them once but that was about it.