artex problem

sassybooboos

bought house and nearly every wall and ceiling is artexed as anyone got any ideas how to get rid, apart from plastering

booty40uk

Hi
Please dont strip it off back to the plaster. Most old artex contains elements of asbestos and should be left alone or stripped out by professionals. Why not just plaster over it?

sassybooboos

it is quite thick on the walls, nice swirly patterns, i dont know if they could plaster that thick.

its only a speckly pattern on ceilings, so they could probably be skimmed.

nickj_2

i would have thought that plastering would be your best bet , the time and mess it would take to strip would be outweighed by the speed of plastering , you may find that the walls aren't in a good state under the artex and might need plastering anyway

andrew-b

You can buy a special artex remover that you paint on to soften it up however it is really pricey stuff. You could try using a wallpaper steamer to soften it and scrape it off but it'll be a very long job and you plaster behind may blow if you leave the steamer on one spot for too long.
A word of caution though..older artex contained asbestos which i'm sure you know can be dangerous stuff. Have you any indication of when the artex was done?

sassybooboos

dont really know i think the previous owners did it and they lived there for about 20 yrs, house really dated.

i think i will just have to pay for plastering, wont risk asbestos problem as i got a little un

really strange as valuation said nothing about may be asbestos materials, but house i just sold which is a lot newer did say that. so im hoping he was a artex expert.

Toiletduck

sassybooboos wrote: »

it is quite thick on the walls, nice swirly patterns, i dont know if they could plaster that thick.

its only a speckly pattern on ceilings, so they could probably be skimmed.

I had the big thick swirly patterns on my kitchen ceiling, a plasterer was able to skim it flat no problems. Cost me £100 and looks like new now.

Andy

owls

You can replaster over artex no probs, if the patern is over about 4mm in depth it will require a backing plaster prior to skimming [a skimcoat can only be appled to about 4mm in depth].

jason_s_2

Plastering over the artex is the cleanest and quickest method. A bonding coat will 1st be applied to level the walls then a skim coat with be applied over the top of that.

nelly_2

Buy another house

Not all artex has asbo in it and there is a recent report that its been over played money making scheme anyway

MrBear1980

Our house had artex on every ceiling (not on any walls fortunately) and we have been through the hassle of trying to get rid of it.

There is some special stuff called X-Tex that you paint on, leave for a couple of hours and then come back to scrape it off. It is a form of wet removal so you'll be safe from asbestos. I tried using this stuff and whilst it worked we were still left with a crap looking ceiling and the mess involved was horrific. It's like really soft manky chewing gum when it comes off and it gets everywhere. I expect it's much the same if you try and steam it off and I also heard that wallpaper paste makes it go soggy too.

Really, by far and away the best solution is to get it plastered over. We have had our whole house replastered, some areas back to brick but mostly reskimmed and I can't emphasise just how great it looks. I had also tried a couple of the 'smoothover' type products out there and they weren't bad but nothing like as good as the real thing (we had the smoothover plastered over in the end).

Whatever you do don't try and sand it down. Like others have said it can contain asbestos. I did some research and my conclusion was that the risk from it is very low but sanding probably isn't a good idea.