Messed up Plastering :D How do you get to stick to Artex?

[MrDavidRoberts]

Well this is rather embarrassing but I messed up my plastering job pretty badly..
Had finished ceiling a few days ago, today was giving it a mistcoat with a roller while I suddenly hear some crackling sound ,than I started to see a crack in ceiling appearing and ran away just in time while all my work from few days ago came tumbling down 1sec later

reason- poor /non existing adhesion to the old glossy painted artex ceiling.
A day wasted, but at least it came down now before all the other works were finished.
I hadn't plastered over this kind of surface before and it seemed fine to me, but obviously not the case.

Can someone aware me on what is the correct procedure on preparing such ceiling before doing a plaster coat on it? Thinking about screwing down an extra new plasterboard and plastering over it.

 

[inkyblue]

You need to give the ceiling a good application of unibond before attempting to plaster it. A hand full of sand mixed in with the unibond will give a really good key. Depending on the thickness of the artex you may want to plasterboard over it if its too thick (over 6mm). Good luck

 

[MrDavidRoberts]

You need to give the ceiling a good application of unibond before attempting to plaster it. A hand full of sand mixed in with the unibond will give a really good key. Depending on the thickness of the artex you may want to plasterboard over it if its too thick (over 6mm). Good luck

Thanks, really good idea about the sand!
I guess I can use any pva glue not only your suggested unibond? I already got a bucket of pva I had used for bonding something else.

the artex is one of these not-so-bad ones ,

I thought about sanding that stuff off and keying the structure a bit, but...there's supposedly asbestos inside in the older artex stuff, not sure how old is this stuff exactly.

 

[inkyblue]

Yeah, I say unibond but mean pva!

 

[Bm101]

Mix the pva about 5 to 1 and depending on the porosity of the surface either coat and let fully dry then recoat (or do one coat pva) and skim while the pva is still tacky. Don't let it dry out or you'll face the opposite problem of all the water being sucked out.
Have to say, you're a brave man doing you're own plastering if you want a real quality finish and you're doing it for the first time. (?) Not saying it's not possible at all so good luck but I've worked with a few plasterers over the years and a fair few of them seem to struggle to get a really good finish. It's one of the few jobs I wouldn't contemplate doing alongside fitting my own gas supply.... Not naysaying, we're all different, good luck with it. Hope it turns out well.

Cheers
Chris

 

[Doug B]

Personally on ceilings I always overboard & skim
If you insist on just over skimming then better to use a plaster gripcoat primer rather than pva

 

[MrDavidRoberts]

Mix the pva about 5 to 1 and depending on the porosity of the surface either coat and let fully dry then recoat (or do one coat pva) and skim while the pva is still tacky. Don't let it dry out or you'll face the opposite problem of all the water being sucked out.
Have to say, you're a brave man doing you're own plastering if you want a real quality finish and you're doing it for the first time. (?) Not saying it's not possible at all so good luck but I've worked with a few plasterers over the years and a fair few of them seem to struggle to get a really good finish. It's one of the few jobs I wouldn't contemplate doing alongside fitting my own gas supply.... Not naysaying, we're all different, good luck with it. Hope it turns out well.

Cheers
Chris

thanks, no- not my first time, Have done about 150m2 in total before ,coupled with a good trowel it's not that hard to get super smooth finish after a bit of practice
It's just very fast-paced backbreaking & tiring work, wouldn't want to be doing it as a dayjob for sure....

 

[tsb]

Have a look on the plasterers forum. I'm sure you don't use pva over Artex.

 

[Eric The Viking]

[Since nobody else has mentioned it, genuine "Artex" contains asbestos (blue, IIRC, which is the worst sort).

Whatever else you do, DO NOT SAND IT or drill it. The fibres will stay around for years, and are a serious health risk even after you've finished the decorating.

It's a confunded nuisance, and can be horribly expensive to deal with properly.

 

[RogerS]

[Since nobody else has mentioned it, genuine "Artex" contains asbestos (blue, IIRC, which is the worst sort).

Whatever else you do, DO NOT SAND IT or drill it. The fibres will stay around for years, and are a serious health risk even after you've finished the decorating.

It's a confunded nuisance, and can be horribly expensive to deal with properly.

Not 100% accurate.

Yes, a lot of Artex had asbestos in it but some did not. To be on the safe side you can get it checked for around £55 and well worth it IMO. I had ours checked ad it was OK fortunately.

Even if you DO have some asbestos in it, it is nowhere near as bad as people originally thought as it is white asbestos. Still not a good idea to drill or sand it but removal does NOT require all the specialist gizmos that they used to use in the past. Still needs removing professionally but much cheaper than it used to be.

 

[Richard S]

We recently had some artex ceilings skimmed and where advised to overboard them first. Apparently the artex can absorb the moisture from the skim causing not only adhesion problems between the skim and artex but can cause the artex to detach from the original ceiling. Took me and the brother a day to overboard four ceilings so not a huge job and the finish is superb. Incidentally we took a chance on a small section of vertical wall in a bathroom ( don't ask it was done in the 80's) and we got three or four largish blisters where the artex detached so looks like it was good advice.

 

[Eric The Viking]

I sit corrected about the type of Asbestos - white, not blue (but blue looks white once processed!).

The HSE's information on the subject is here.

 

[Setch]

My place has very similar looking artex, looks like a native sheet of sweat it you're unwise enough to put gloss or semi gloss on it.

I had a water leak from a new boiler installation, and the affected area caused the artex to delamination cleanly from the PB ceiling, so you could try stripping it with a wall paper stripper.

I overboarded the ceilings I've worked on, but I can't plaster well enough to tackle a ceiling, so I taped and jointed the boards.

 

[HOJ]

Always wary about reskimming ceilings, all depends on how clean the surface is to start with, job we have just done, 1970's artexed lounge ceiling (tested for asbestos) 10 * 6 mtrs, heavy smoker
lived there prior to new owners, master bedroom above, so good chance of "activities", decided to re board, glad we did, found a dogs dinner of electrics, plumbing, and sagging joists.

However, when plastering over anything we always use Feb Blue grit:

https://www.randjbuildershardware.c...t-10-litre-bonding-agent_1404.htm?sid=4096000

 

[RogerS]

Forgot to say that I'm with Doug B...overboarding ceilings is the best way to go. You know then that you are plastering onto a known and stable surface. Anything else - you're in the lap of the Gods.

 

[Homers double]

As others have said Over boarding is the best way to go, a couple of times I've have to preserve plaster details in ceilings and have found a product called febond blue grit to be a excellent, we use it every time we have walls to overskim, I've tried the sand and pva but the blue grit is by far superior.

 

[geoffshep]

I have plastered various jobs but got a pro in for a large re-skim and ceiling - which was the right decision! We used that blue grit stuff on pre plastered and painted areas and it worked a treat. His advice too on artex was to re-board and skim, and not to try to skim over artex, even with the blue grit.

 

[Jasper42]

I'm a qualified C&G plaster but not in the trade. The recommended way is to board over but in my own house I just use pva first, a few weak coats followed by a stronger final coat. Never had it fail yet and my house was covered in the stuff. If I was doing it for someone else I would recommend boarding over As I would hate for it to fail.