Home DIY

I managed to ‘save’ this lime plaster ceiling in my house, which I had stripped the paper off in a fit of exuberance, only to discover cracks surrounding large areas, it was the cornice I wanted to keep really but a dead flat plasterboard ceiling would look all wrong.
I primed it heavily with SBR then stapled up glass fibre rendering scrim and skimmed over it.
It was an experiment but it’s been up 2 years and all seems solid.

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It’s about 50sqm.

I don’t have a huge amount of time so the thought of spending every weekend for the foreseeable future chipping off plaster is not that appealing.

There are some jobs that it's best not to take on. I've stripped a few hallways in my time but I wouldn't want to take on the combination that you have there. Like I said, unlucky.

It's been my experience that walls that look like this in part have other parts which are worse (and some better). If you think you can be happy knocking off the existing skim, skimming over the wallpaper and painting then that looks like the least worst option in terms of time and money.

My comment about knocking it all off and starting again comes from the experience of doing it the other way and still making a lot of mess, taking a lot of time and having to accept a certain amount of problems not going away.

Great. I'm not a builder but I see them doing this on London properties all day long.

I could be bothered to rephrase my answer until it suits you but I'm too tired for that.

As far as decorative jobs 'saving' this or that I've got a 30 year career full of those so you're preaching to the choir.

Seems like you’ve got rubbed up the wrong way.
You don’t need to rephrase anything to suit me - it’s ok to differ.

I’m not preaching to anyone, or proselytising
The repair I did on my ceiling saved a ton of time and money in materials- and gave a much better cosmetic result than over-boarding or removal of the plaster & lath and PBing would have.
And it only took a (long) day.

There are times when tearing everything out is expedient, usually when no one is living there, there’s a team of labourers, and a skip out front.
In my case we were all at home and my daughter was about a week off being born.
🙂

After my geefix fail, shelves are back up with gripits. Can't say I'm overly impressed. Had to use blue ones as I'd already drilled 25mm holes. Pop in the gripit OK. Opening the wings needs a massively wide screwdriver and the notches are very weak, so very easy to break. Also have to be super accurate with placement as there is no leeway for error with m8 bolts as fixings. Hopefully the wings went out enough to hold everything up anyway.

As someone who has spent a lot of time hanging heavy and expensive things off single skin plasterboard walls, Gripits seem like a total gimmick to me. Expensive and not as good as many other alternatives. Being removable is nice I guess, but they’re fiddly and easy to break in the process.

These would have been my go to.

https://www.screwfix.com/p/timco-spring-toggles-6-x-40mm-10-pack/4787X?tc=BT2&ds_kid=92700048793290424&ds_rl=1249413&gclid=CjwKCAjwhYOFBhBkEiwASF3KGWAmls73-6nLCy81rGSP3kWeLzT6ChdkBlJ9nr22ayutDCN252v9nhoCIjMQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Ooh those are good. Thanks for the tip.

I have insulated plasterboard throughout our house, makes hanging things an absolute nightmare, as can’t use anything opens up, as nothing gets beyond the 100mm of insulation. The main benefit of grip it for me is that they at least sell a little tool which cuts away enough of the insulation for the wings to open.

are you breaking through the vapour barrier every time you fix something or you just don't worry about that?

Compression joint failed spectacularly yesterday = waterfall through ceiling. Replaced with push-fit* as pictured. Am I right to be nervous about plastic / metal thread interface? I wrapped the threads in ptfe tape.

'*Did both as one failing suggests the other might be near end of life too.

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My walls are weird! They are fully ranked with tanking slurry for a start. Fixing to the internal walls is pretty much impossible apart from in the most desperate needs. They are 900mm thick flint walls which have been heavily repaired over the years with just about every material you can imagine, so it’s pot luck what you hit. The walls are then tanked and have 100mm insulated plasterboard on top of that.

Yeah, that does sound weird. I guess if there's no void behind the insulation it's not an issue anyway.

I was a bit tired! Had a lie down and now everything seems less annoying :)

I can't really see enough from the pictures to have enough of an idea what the hallway walls might be like overall. Having tackled a few jobs like that I do remember the feeling that it might have been better to have stripped it all. Totally understand the issues around dust and why this is the kind of thing usually done when a house is empty.

I would have a few concerns about continuing to strip it if it were my hallway given the hours it might take before it can be made good. How I would actually approach it in this situation I couldn't tell without being on site, looks like it needs careful handling to avoid it becoming a massive time sink.

I've seen hallways stripped to the brickwork and d&d pb on a diy basis with some success but the overall condition of the house comes into play with those levels of dust. As one of these jobs was the neighbours side of our party wall I can say it left much less soundproofing between the properties.

Your ceiling seems like a different case. I have a plaster boarded one in my flat front room because the entire ceiling fell down a couple of years before I moved in. Probably a combination of factors including the upstairs neighbours not being light on their feet. Your solution with the rendering scrim seems to work well. We all have greater or lesser talents with different materials and that's why it's good to have different people giving opinions.

Thanks. I think those would have had the same problem of lack of space behind the plasterboard. Anyway... I really only have a couple of walls in our extension that are plasterboard - the rest of the house has solid concrete walls which come with its own issues.

Hall, stairs and landing in my 60's 3 bed semi cost just under £500 before Christmas to skim coat over the old plaster. Ripping old and starting with bond coats won't be cheap.

Your ceiling seems like a different case.

Yes it is. I brought it up because a conventional approach would be that it ‘all has to come down’.
But that approach isn’t always best ...

There is actually an old school fix for a blown plaster and lath ceiling which is to support it from below, raise the floor boards above, remove the plaster base coat that has squeezed through the lath where the bond to the ceiling is broken and repair those areas with poured over plaster.
I’ve never tried this but I would have if the boards above didn’t go under a huge piece of fitted furniture I built to divide the master bedroom in to 2 separate rooms for the little masters.

In the states (NYC) I came across a renovation scrim that’s basically a metre wide (yard) roll of glass scrim tape, it gets stuck over problem walls and ceilings then skimmed over. I couldn’t find any here, hence my invention.

They’re pretty easy to wrangle in to a a tight spot - but you’re sorted already anyway!

I have the same insulated drywall, and only a 20mm cavity between it and membrane covered brick.

The solution to hanging heavy shit is using a decent sized drill bit at angles to eat enough insulation away so you can then anchor flat against the drywall. As long as you’re careful not to open the hole wider than you want when angling the bit, it gives you a nice bespoke cavity to anchor in.

Yes, have tried that approach, I get a bit carried away at times though! The gripit undercutting tool is quite handy if you have a big enough hole https://www.screwfix.com/p/gripit-25mm-undercutting-tool/5333J?tc=IA6&ds_kid=92700048793290424&ds_rl=1249413&gclid=CjwKCAjwqIiFBhAHEiwANg9szom_q7AXyA8SCe-c2cU-ZwLZU5smsfbUYDm-b0PyYOLy5U7pedlixRoC7vcQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

That big plant is lovely, what is it?

Ficus Elastica.

🙂

I presume that cheap excel router would be up to cutting chases in 18mm OSB?

After a week of mostly sanding, painting and varnishing our stairs are finished. A pig of a job but worth it, the hallway feels so much bigger than with the previous heavily applied dark varnish. Only downside is it's accentuated how yellow the walls are, so will likely tackle that next.

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I would say it depends on the amount of material you’re trying to remove in one pass, how big a chase are you cutting?
OSB has a lot of glue and some of the wood in it can be v resinous and hard.
Top tip; use a v sharp TCT bit and listen to the motor to see if it’s bogging down.

When I was at art school the head technician in the workshops was famous for asking ‘what’s the application’ whenever you asked to borrow a tool, but I get where he was coming from -grumpy old bastard.