Cost of plasterer to skim walls?

Doglover88

soon to be moving into my new place but the interior walls are not in great condition and i was hoping to paint them and not use paper for the minimalistic look. Has anyone had their walls 'skimmed' and if so what sort of money does it cost? I know rooms will vary greatly in size but Im looking for a ballpark figure
cheers
glen

theadore_2

we had a plasterer in a while back and it cost somewhere in the region of £150 for a days work.... was a bit of an emergancy though and we didn't have time to shop around.

if its a small job you could always try something like polycell smooth over

robv_3

Most plasters will charge between 200 and 450 for a days work. Al depends how much they want the job

Luis

I had a room of about 4m square done in 2002 for £150 (which considering there were patio doors, a door, a fireplace and a radiator which took the size of the area down - I thought was scandalous).

Suffice to say, the walls in my current house are abysmal, and I have papered over them with textured paper instead.

jaxxy00

I suppose where you live can make a difference in prices charged but we live in Norfolk and was given a figure of £12 per metre squared. To give you an idea our front room measures approx 18' x 13' and he was going to charge £240. As its a friend and we need the front room and hall, stairs and landing doing he said he would do everything for a round figure of £250 and we buy the plaster. Hope this gives you something to go on. Another trick though is to buy the thickest lining paper you can get, do all your walls with that but dont butt up the joins, instead leave about a 2 or 3mm gap in between. Then what you do is mix up some filler and smooth it all the way down the gap, slightly proud. THen when it is dry, sand it down level with the surface of the paper and that way you have a nice smooth wall with no signs of joins. It works very well and weve done it in all our bedrooms.

coffeeandfags

Im having mine done tommorrow (spent all day today scraping wallpaper)
My living room is 12 feet by 13 feet, one door, one window , one radiator, and its costing £160.
However, considering that if i were to wallpaper, the paper prob. costing £10 a roll and a decorater taking £10 a roll to hang, its working out the same price to have nice smooth painted walls.

I live in north Scotland by the way, im sure where you live can make a difference.

Coffeeandfags

Juicy_Tube

glenbat wrote:

soon to be moving into my new place but the interior walls are not in great condition and i was hoping to paint them and not use paper for the minimalistic look. Has anyone had their walls 'skimmed' and if so what sort of money does it cost? I know rooms will vary greatly in size but Im looking for a ballpark figure
cheers
glen

How bad are they?

Could you not sand them yourself?

Just an idea, but depends on your walls I suppose!

JT x

Kippsy

If you can try and get someone recommended to you, neighbours friends etc... My Uncle "helped" us out when we moved in doing some plastering, we have done some filling but there is one ceiling that is just abysmal and we are going to have to have re-skimmed and there are other walls we are thinking about papering!!! Not very money saving...

No I haven't told the uncle...

lipidicman

We have artex - anybody have any experience of dealing with this - do you just skim over it? I also heard some artex has asbestos in it!

bosey

artex is a nightmare! if it is laid on thick (ie. the pointy bits stick out a lot) then the plasterer may want to put a coat of bonding or another plaster undercoat to level it out - then a top coat of finish plaster.

If its not too bad then you may get away with a thick first coat & then a normal second.

You might want to think about reboarding the ceiling (I'm guessing its a ceiling) as this way you will get a good finish with least expense from the plasterer.

lipidicman

Um, no. Not the ceiling - the last person to own the house has done the entire ground floor! Even the kitchen walls are artexed - it is hell. We are thinking it would be easier to just sell up than deal with it!