Home DIY

5 year old and 8 year old mean that all areas of my house are high traffic areas.

I tried out Benjamin Moore paint for the first time on a wood bannister, very impressed and will use again. Got it from G Travers&Co in Ealing, helpful and un-bullshitty.

Not really DIY because I’m going to pay someone else to do it…but an artex question.

Have a swirly ceiling in the kitchen and had a plasterer come round to give a quote yesterday and he said that the artex is too deep, 3/3.5mm in places, to cover with PVA and then skim plaster over. So he said he’d need to chip off the deeper parts first.

For some reason I had a mind blank and forgot until today about the whole asbestos artex issue. I would think the best approach is to cover without disturbing/breaking it up. Plasterboard then PVA and plaster? Not sure I fancy someone chipping potential asbestos all over the kitchen.

Any experience with this here or thoughts?

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Any experience with this here or thoughts?

We had two plasterers quote for skimming artex & textured paint on walls, both containing Asbestos. One said he'd have to sand it back, the other said this was nonsense - he got a perfect finish. So might be worth getting a second quote?

If its plaster board under it they wont be able to scrap it off, they just had to remove the board and replace it. I know becuase I just had this done.

My partners parents have just had their ceilings lowered by a few cm with new boards to hide the artex, if you have high enough ceilings this is great. You could never ever tell theyd had it.

15 years ago, our neighbours had theirs skimmed and it looks good.

Please don't disturb this stuff. I'm not a tradey so don't know how I'd approach it, but I wouldn't want a) to be be stood under it as I sanded or b) the dust to be all over my house.

It will be full of chrysotile (white) asbestos.

Id get another person in to quote, should be able to skim that.

Anyone who looks at it and says "ah, we can just sand it off", never invite them back to do any work in your property.

Asbestos free Artex has been around since the 1970s, outlawed in the UK 1999.
If it was me, I'd get it tested first so that you know what you are dealing with.
Covering up won't rid you of the problem by either skimming or overboarding.

Plus a house that is asbestos free has more value and less residual risk, same applies to existing paint with lead content. Either choose to deal with it, or make it someone else's problem once you has sold the property.

i remember putting poly-ripple on the walls of my bedroom when I was 11 (1979) should i sue my foster parents for;
a) child labour
b) exposure to potentially deadly material

Oh I accept all of that, but anyone who says they're gonna sand it back - with none of the "let's get it tested” chat - well, they're a liability and not fit to be making a living through working in other people's homes.

Thanks for the advice all. Will get some quotes elsewhere and choose the option least likely to cause harm.

Agreed. But this applies to all airborne dust, from silica, wood, MDF, asbestos, gypsum, lime, lead, that if inhaled would be bad for one’s health. Everyone should think about that before starting major work or getting tradesmen in.

We also have to do anthrax testing on old plaster walls before demo / hard strip as part of our enabling works at the Palace..

sanding artex would be a disaster regardless of asbestos or not.

https://www.hse.gov.uk/construction/healthrisks/hazardous-substances/construction-dust.htm

We also have to do anthrax testing on old plaster

For horse hair?

And I maybe come across a bit “evangelical”, but given my profession, I’m duty bound to point out potentially harmful courses of action by people working in construction.

You obviously know you’re stuff, btw, and not a cowboy! :-D

Unpopular opinion time.
First off, get it tested for asbestos if you’re concerned. It’s not that expensive and the turnaround is relatively fast.
I wouldn’t sand it even if it didn’t have asbestos in it, sounds v messy.
The amount of asbestos in artex is low, and it’s the least dangerous type. Knocking a few nibs off isn’t likely to pose that much risk and it won’t really create much dust.
As has been pointed out, all construction dust is v bad for you. Uncured cement, plaster etc particularly shit me up as they’ll react with the moisture in your lungs and be nasty. Any kind of glass fibre insulation also seems particularly grim, but people will bring down a ceiling with old insulation behind it along with decades worth of old and horrible dust but have nowhere near the same level of vigilance compared to suspected asbestos.

Essentially dust is v bad, and we know asbestos dust is really bad. But you won’t actually have much exposure having a plasterer denib an artex ceiling IMO, especially if they prep the area properly and clean up afterwards.

plaster

Fucking horrible stuff. Led to a 3 month migraine, as it had landed in my sinuses and was all but solidified there.

I mean its white asbestos which is the least dangerous that in it, now if brown or blue then id worry another thing is that there is asbestos in the air. I mean we cut about citys and tubes and breath all that shit in all the time.

So not DIY... but can anyone recommend a drain unblocking company that serves North London?

Good experience, albeit years ago (at least 15) with Burch Services - https://www.burchdrainage.com/

Obviously try all the DIY suggestions first!

All this plus if you attended secondary school in the 90s odds are you have been exposed to a significantly higher level of airborne asbestos than you would be if you decided to remove a ceilings worth of artex with a belt sander and no dust extraction. The heat proof gauzes that went between the Bunsen burners and glasswear was azzy caked onto wire mesh and in my experience were thrown about with much enthusiasm.

For horse hair?

yep, although it’s rare to find anthrax these days. Generally only required on the medieval parts of our restoration work where construction methods and materials differ from the Victorian built palace.

btw, I’m not a builder, but part of a conservation and heritage team involved in intrusive surveys. My knowledge is fairly basic, but in terms of responsibility for our staff and supply chain, awareness is paramount.

did you know that smokers are 12 times more susceptible to lung related illness from building dust.

Also did you know that Kent cigarettes used to have 10mgs of the deadly blue 'crocidolite' asbestos in each filter back in the 1950s

Our dining room was flagged on the survey. We paid £100 in 2018. £80 for the first sample and £2o per extra sample. DIY tests where you post it to a lab were c.£50 iirc.

Would recommend him:

https://safety-surveys.co.uk/

https://www.google.co.uk/search?source=hp&ei=ipKPW9-1OI6ZlwT83pKIAg&q=safety+surveys+hockliffe&oq=safet&gs_l=psy-ab.1.1.35i39k1l2j0i131k1l5j0l3.696.1807.0.4267.6.5.0.0.0.0.188.376.2j1.3.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..3.3.372.0...0.G1FD5P6t0io#lrd=0x4876514b22580175:0x80593ac735eaea36,3,,,

In terms of the plaster, the one we had fix on of our ceilings said the same thing as yours when we asked about a reskim. Can't remember if he talked about knocking high spots off.

Last night's gem find when replacing the 18mm loft board being used as floorboards(literally loft boards, I found the wrapper, 1220x,320) Lord knows why, must have been so much work given how jigsaw-like it was. Two bits of 50mmx50mm timber nailed to the joist by two nails, the kicker was that they were an inch higher than any other high spot on the floor.
No wonder the floor was so effing wavy and flexed, because each board was effectively only supported by one joist, and wasn't stiff enough to transfer to the joist at each end.

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Thanks for the links. Not really too fussed about having it tested if it can just be skimmed over. It’s a very small space - 2.5m x 2.5m - so the total job cost is only around £200.

It does seems to be quite a contentious issue though. I’ve had two more quotes from other plasterers - one who says he doesn’t scrape high points because of the asbestos risk, he normally does 3 coats instead. The other though, similar to @Nef thinking above, says he’s done thousands of artex ceilings and adamant that there’s no risk, quote “there’s only 0.08 asbestos in them ceilings”. This fella says the problem with not scraping the high points is the more layers of plaster required to cover puts a lot of weight on the ceiling.

So it’s 2-1 to the scrapers right now and to be honest I have no idea who’s right.

says he’s done thousands of artex ceilings and adamant that there’s no risk, quote “there’s only 0.08 asbestos in them ceilings”

I truly hope he's right.