Plastering

forester.1

I have ordered the book today. Have some artex to skim! Ihpe it works!

SooTee_2

Getting Plastered! Thanks for plastering thread it's reminded me to ask:- :question:
I had a radiator leak and plaster has been removed to dry outside wall. House is 100 years old and previous owners had damp course injected into walls. It's still drying out from leak but does some special plaster (or whatever) have to be put on wall to stop seepage occurring when eventually I can get it done?

ricgre

Tried both the Polycell products which are supposed to make your walls smooth. They didn't work for me. The roller paint stuff did not make any difference and the thicker stuff you apply with a special tool was as difficult as using plaster, well for me anyway. Ended up taking them back to B&Q and got our money back and for the special tool as well. Sorry about the 'stuff' but I can not remember the name of either of them!

busterkeye

forester.1 wrote:

I have ordered the book today. Have some artex to skim! Ihpe it works!

GOOD LUCK you'll need it

sootee yes ther is some special plaster for the job just go into your local builders yard and ask, diy shops wont have it (cant think for the life of me what its called and im a plasterer) you can just skim over it with multi finnish


jetsy
(I wouldn't dream of spending £400 for one room - Charges for plastering do vary a lot BUT it isn't that hard to get quite a reasonable finish yourself (really!!) There is a great ebook available which teaches the novice or complete beginner about technique and literally goes through step by step how to plaster your first wall. Clearly, some professional plasterers do get a perfect finish but you would be amazed at how many don't or take ages to do just one wall - why pay someone's hourly rate for being slow when you can do it yourself?

Check out the plastering book being sold on this site, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than £400 !! By the way, Thistle Multi finish plaster is for professionals but very good for the DIYer also - just get right consistency, that's the trick. Have a go, got nothing to lose and worst case is you call someone in to clean up your mess )

I bet your walls look brill lol

do you know how long it takes to finnish one wall???

jetsy

To forester.1 - I think the skim stuff being asked about on here could be "Skim Coat", I have bought it in DIY before but I wasn't that impressed with it and it seemed hard to use and was about £10 a bag, you need several bags to cover artex on a wall/ceiling. As for learning how to do the basic plastering, you definitely can learn the technique in a couple of hours, it obviously takes loads of practice to get a finish like a pro but lots of us just need a flat(ish) surface so for that purpose, go for it, the technique gets better with every bit of practice, i promise. As for how long to do one wall, I would say that a wall of about 10x8ft would take about 2-3 hrs from start to finish. You then have to leave it to dry, don't paint immediately, wait a few weeks. Re where to buy, Wickes seem to have the cheapest deal at present on Thistle multi-finish - about £3.72 a bag currently. They also do their own brand but never used it b4. Good luck!

sjpkgp

Admittedly our dining room is big @ 15 foot square but last year we had quotes of over a grand to get it done. The cheapest (before we managed to find a "mate of a mate") was £600 if I remember rightly. We got three quotes and it was weeks of effort getting those with people not seeming to want the work/not turning up etc. We live in the North East and it seems difficult to get reasonable tradesmen for almost any job.

Al that said, I agree with the plasterers that have posted, it is hard dirty work, and at least they genuinely have to spend the time doing it. I have had worse situations where you pay someone plenty and they seem to be gone in an hour.

BFJ

shiprob195 wrote:

we live in leicester and had a bedroom(12x12) skimmed recently. the ceiling was ARTEX (urgh) the walls were all uneven.it cost £250. the finish was really good all we had to do was paint the walls and ceiling.

Can you provide details of the plasterer. Live near Leicester and need kitchen skimming so would like to check them out.

Thanks!

somefriendlyuk

SooTee wrote:

Getting Plastered! Thanks for plastering thread it's reminded me to ask:- :question:
I had a radiator leak and plaster has been removed to dry outside wall. House is 100 years old and previous owners had damp course injected into walls. It's still drying out from leak but does some special plaster (or whatever) have to be put on wall to stop seepage occurring when eventually I can get it done?

there isn't a special plaster to go 'ON' the wall as such. If your wall does not dry out after a good few months it may have to come of (to 1.2m high or 600mm above the line of damp) and be replastered. Other people may be thinking of renovating plaster or limelight its sometimes called. I've been in damp proofing a long time and all the companies i know who used this product got alot of combacks(failures) The traditional way is to use a mix of sand/cement (called render) with various waterproofing chemicals in.The fact that it had a damp course previouly isn't a help because you really don't know what they did and any gaurantee will not cover the leak. however as the damp may have been caused by the leak it should be covered under our house insurance. hope this is of help -any question please ask.

somefriendlyuk

forester.1 wrote:

I have ordered the book today. Have some artex to skim! Ihpe it works!

hi forrester-i don't like to put anyone of having a go at anything and i haven't read the book -but please feel free to ask me any questions before you start -i've been a plasterer a long time (although i run a small building preervation business now) and i will try to help you- i read of how people go about some skimming on her and can't but wonder what the walls really look like! Good luck mate

sukey13

We paid £1000 for an entire annexe to be done - front room, kitchen, bathroom, dining room and two bedrooms. We're in Somerset