Plastering and Skimming

Skimming is the thin finish coat, usually two or three millimetres, laid over a background that is already sound and flat. Full plastering means building the wall back up first with a backing coat before that finish goes on. Most jobs in occupied homes are skims. Lee will tell you which one your wall actually needs when he looks at it.

Usually yes. The peaks get knocked off, the surface is sealed with a bonding primer and then it is skimmed flat. Where the artex is thick, badly cracked or already parting from the ceiling, overboarding first is the honest answer, because a skim is only ever as sound as what it is stuck to.

It needs to come off, but you do not have to be the one to do it. If it is already stripped that saves time and cost. If not, Lee will price the stripping in. What is not an option is skimming over paper, because the paste behind it lets go and takes the new plaster with it.

Give it four to seven days to dry out fully, longer in a cold or unheated room. The plaster goes from dark pink to a uniform pale colour when it is ready. The first coat should be a watered-down mist coat so the porous surface takes it evenly, then two full coats on top.

Less than people expect. Floors and anything left in the room get sheeted before a bag is opened, and the debris and old wallpaper go with Lee at the end of the job. There will be dust, and there will be a couple of hours where the room is out of use, but you are not left with a clean-up.

No. Nearly all of this work happens around people living normally in the house. One room at a time means one room out of use at a time. Lee works around the household rather than the other way round, and jobs get finished when they were said to be finished.

Yes, and it is worth doing at the same time. Ceilings are the surface where a poor finish shows most, because the light rakes across them. Doing the ceiling and walls in one visit also avoids the mess of coming back and re-sheeting a room you have just decorated.

Clear the room as far as you reasonably can, and take down curtains, blinds and anything hanging on the walls. Anything that will not move gets sheeted. Beyond that, nothing. Lee brings water, power leads, sheeting and everything else the job needs.

Hairline movement at the junction between a wall and ceiling is normal in an older house and gets caulked before decorating. Cracking across the face of a wall is not normal and means the background moved or the wrong material was used on it. That is exactly why the preparation stage gets the time it does.

Both. Single rooms are the bread and butter, but full-house skims after a renovation or before a sale are regular work too. On a whole house Lee will sequence it so you keep usable rooms throughout rather than losing the lot at once.