plastering

[bigegg]

I've got a wall to do
Never plastered before, but I can't do worse than what's already on...

I've patched up some BIG holes (like 4ftwide x 2ft high) where the old plaster has fallen off - PVA sealer, dot and dab plasterboard . Jobs a good'un.
Gonna fill around the edges of the plasterboard with Polycell "premixed plaster repair" in two coats before a final skim of the entire wall with thistle multifinish.

The rest of the wall has some nail holes and previously (very badly and roughly) filled holes, which I plan to cover with the skim - the filled holes are solid enough, just rough.

Basically, my question is...
do I need to fill the nail/screw/rawlplug holes before skimming?
I don't mind one way or the other - except no point in repeating a job I don't need to. (there's a LOT of holes - at least 30!)

 

[rkde]

You will be fine, just skim over

 

[Gritineye]

You've got a lot of different substrates on one wall, PVA over the whole wall and let it dry to even up the suction..

 

[bigegg]

You've got a lot of different substrates on one wall, PVA over the whole wall and let it dry to even up the suction..

Thanks for confirming.

done that! <thumbsup>

 

[bigegg]

New question.
I've stuck the plasterboard to the wall with Gripfill (solvent type).
how long before I can fill round it?
The destructions aren't very helpful...

 

[pedrobedro]

Solvent type is pretty much instant, if it's under the board and not coming into contact with your damp plaster you should be good to go in a couple of hours. Thistle should only be applied in coats a couple of millimetres thick. Dob some of your Polycell in the holes while you are filling round the boards, I've never used the multifinish but if you put ordinary Thistle on too thick it cracks when drying.

 

[Kent]

Why make new ways up of doing an old job? Onto timber with plaster board screws, slightly below flush or directly onto Board adhesive, tape joints with self adhesive scrim. Then skim

If you want a quick easy and cheap job just slap up the boards easy fill on the joints (no scrim), sand and paint (don't laugh major house builders are doing this often enough now. To me its just not right.

Plastering is certainly one job were if there is a fair bit to do it pays to call in a specialist, even if you can do it you will never compete on speed and likely quality and you get a lot done in a day with a good guy.

 

[Shedendman]

Why make new ways up of doing an old job? Onto timber with plaster board screws, slightly below flush or directly onto Board adhesive, tape joints with self adhesive scrim. Then skim

If you want a quick easy and cheap job just slap up the boards easy fill on the joints (no scrim), sand and paint (don't laugh major house builders are doing this often enough now. To me its just not right.

Plastering is certainly one job were if there is a fair bit to do it pays to call in a specialist, even if you can do it you will never compete on speed and likely quality and you get a lot done in a day with a good guy.

Totally agree

 

[Maker]

I used thistle multi finish yesterday, at collage, and we were told to get it on as quick as possible, spend around 20 mins cleaning up everything then, with a clean trowel, go over it to get the lines out. Also, make sure the wall's clean first.

 

[Keith 66]

A few years ago we had a big extension done, the plasterer we chose was bloody good, arms & neck like popeye & a first class clean worker.
I watched how he did it & thought i can do that. Yeah right. I had one small room left to do including ceiling. I loaded up the hawk with plaster jumped on the hop up & all the plaster somehow slid over my shoulder landing like a giant cow pat. By the time i finished it was up my nose in my ears in fact i must have looked like i had been dipped in it. There was as much on the floor as on the ceiling. It was not up to the professional's standard!
Next time i will give Jason brett a ring!

 

[brightspark]

i do a lot of patching plastering on rewires ect most plasterers dont like doing it and would rather plaster by the square meter.its like everything else its what u are used to and doing it day in and day out practice makes perfect along with speed

 

[Pete.]

I did some once repairing my front room walls. Took for ever with much swearing and frustration. I swore I'd never do it again and I never have, if it costs me £300 for a plasterer for the day then I see it as money well spent.

 

[brightspark]

the reason most people cant plaster is there using a cheap tat float . buy a decent run in worn tyzack or a marshaltown and watch the pros do it . then have a go yourself. if your half decent practical u will soon pick it up

 

[anjum]

I was dividing a room into two by putting up a couple of walls. One was 4m by 3m (I had to do both sides and a shorter wall). So I decided to have a go with a borrowed float.
Took me longer than a professional (especially at the start) but I got a good finish.
Bought a good stainless steel float and some edging and corner trowels. Done a bit more since then, learnt a lot, but the satisfaction of doing something that is normally considered a skilled professional only job was great.

 

[dannyp]

allways used to be marshaltown trowels for me ( the stainless one's ) with the "preworn" edges they are managable from new but the more you use them the better they get, untill they are really sharp. mine used to regualy slice unsuspecting labourers.

i allways found that the 14" trowels were best for genera work never been abel to use the silly littel trowels most people get.

thitel multifinish it's good stuff that its amazeing what you can make it do, blastering is a lot about timeing, get your timeing right and its easy get it wrong and your in for a workout.


if yur repairing a hole where plaster has fallen off i'd be tempted to use bonding. soak the hole in PVA, thistel do bonding the bags are purple iirc mix a load of that up, duff a bit of multi finish in with it to get it going off at a reasonable rate and spread that around in the hole. oce its gone hard PVA the whole wall and skim with multi finish

another tip, check the date on the bag. plaster has a shelf life of officaly 6 months really you want bags that are no more than a couple of months old at the most tho. the older the plaster is the quicker it goes off till the point i'll literaly set in the bucket ( that stuff is usefull for patching tho )

 

[dannyp]

allways used to be marshaltown trowels for me ( the stainless one's ) with the "preworn" edges they are managable from new but the more you use them the better they get, untill they are really sharp. mine used to regualy slice unsuspecting labourers.

i allways found that the 14" trowels were best for genera work never been abel to use the silly littel trowels most people get.

thitel multifinish it's good stuff that its amazeing what you can make it do, blastering is a lot about timeing, get your timeing right and its easy get it wrong and your in for a workout.


if yur repairing a hole where plaster has fallen off i'd be tempted to use bonding. soak the hole in PVA, thistel do bonding the bags are purple iirc mix a load of that up, duff a bit of multi finish in with it to get it going off at a reasonable rate and spread that around in the hole. oce its gone hard PVA the whole wall and skim with multi finish

another tip, check the date on the bag. plaster has a shelf life of officaly 6 months really you want bags that are no more than a couple of months old at the most tho. the older the plaster is the quicker it goes off till the point i'll literaly set in the bucket ( that stuff is usefull for patching tho )

 

[Henrik]

I plastered a couple of rooms in the house when I moved in, and tbh they came out looking really quite great, except for one wall which ended up bumpy due to being interrupted with questions by some tradesmen all the time.

I cheat, however... I plonk the plaster on with the trovel, then let it sit for a while and smooth it out again with the trovel (it's far from perfect at this stage).
Once it's set a bit more, I use one of those sponge floats normally used for rendering. Use it reasonably wet, and float the whole wall in a circular motion (the circular bit is important). Once floated, let it go off for a couple of more minutes, then smooth it out with the trovel. The circular motion and the float smooths out dips etc, which a newbie invariably ends up creating.

Once the wall is almost dry, I splash a tiny bit of water on the wall and trovel it again. This gives a little bit of a shine and removes any final trovel marks. I did dry trovel it once more on a couple of walls, and ended up with a nice sheen, but it was harder to paint it when it was too smooth, tbh.

The process takes ages, and is heavy work, but it does come out looking good in the end. I can do a reasonably sized room in a day, so it's definitely slower than a pro going full speed, but I'm always broke, so if I can avoid paying 300 pounds for something I can actually do myself, then I will, even if it takes weeks to complete a project.

The one "disaster" I had was when trying to plaster a ceiling. Just don't go there if you're an amateur IMO, unless you absolutely have to. The surface area of the roof is usually the largest area in the room, and it's awkward positioning-wise, so an amateur will basically run out of time when doing ceilings in bigger rooms. Small 2x1.5m "bathroom" style ceilings I'd attempt with my method above, but anything bigger than that and I'd be tempted to dry line...

 

[DanielW]

the reason most people cant plaster is there using a cheap tat float . buy a decent run in worn tyzack or a marshaltown and watch the pros do it . then have a go yourself. if your half decent practical u will soon pick it up

Have to disagree with you Brighty,I was pretty good at plastering and have had even good praise from a plasterer.

I bought a cheap float but before I used it I slighty rounded of the corners and filed the edges,this helps to stop the float digging in.

Speed is of the essence that is get that plaster on the wall as fast as you can muster,then you can have a short break cup of tea and a fag,return and start smoothing it out and looking at different angles to see where it needs filling in to bring it level.

Plasteres use a brush to flash the wall with sprinklets of water when smoothing off I used to use a spray bottle,much easier.

Sadly I ain't capable of plastering now and when I got the hang of it I really enjoyed doing it and the more I plastered the better I got and used a derby to make sure the plaster was flat,not many of todays plasteres don't use this anymore,I asked plasterer years ago can he get the wall flat...oh I can get it looking flat...he never got the work for saying that,not interested if you can't the wall flat you don't get the job as far as I'm concerned hence me taking up plastering at the time.

 

[DanielW]

The bitch about plastering is the trowel,if wooden or plastic handle it can give you blisters,rubber handle is the way to go or wear latex gloves when end polishing.

 

[Kent]

i do a lot of patching plastering on rewires ect most plasterers dont like doing it and would rather plaster by the square meter.its like everything else its what u are used to and doing it day in and day out practice makes perfect along with speed

Have you tried Easyfill over conventional plaster for this task? Its very good for it when the area is a patch-up only of old fittings or new channelling out. Keep a sealed tub of powder in the van and it lasts ages and far easier to blend via a light sand over (bit of white dust to clean that's all)