Just like many DIY'ers, we wanted to save money wherever we can. DIY plastering really put the 'budget' in 'budget friendly' and has saved us thousands of pounds through-out our renovation.
If just like us, you're willing to give plastering a shot, here's some detail on where to start.
The prepping stage of plastering is essential. We've unintentionally skimped on this in the past, and ultimately paid the price. Though we'll have many other blogs delving into tips, costs and savings of DIY plastering, this article will feature the importance and methods of preparing your walls.
Step 1 - Clean
The one key message from the preparation stage is dust free. Having dust beneath your plaster can not only prevent it from adhering, but cause lumps and un-smooth patches that will ruin your day.
Our house didn't have a wall un-touched by wood-chip wallpaper. Even after painstakingly removing it, it leaves residue of glue and stubborn bits that you'd usually not notice.
We recommend washing your walls with warm soapy water and a sponge to to move any bits and dust, from your walls and skirting boards. We do this everytime to ensure all wallpaper is removed. Plaster WILL NOT adhere to wallpaper too well!
Step 2 - Corner Beads
The next step is to add corner beads to each corner edge that you have in your plastering space. For a usual room, this would be none, however in homes like ours, we have protruding edges that need those crisp corners keeping.
Most plasterers we've spoken to have a different way of fixing in the corner beads. Some will recommend adhering them with plaster, and a variety of different other methods. We simply nail these in and this has worked perfectly for us!
Anglebeads/Cornerbeads aren't a step you can miss out. If you need them, you need them. They come in a a variety of lengths (that can be cut down) , and you can get a a pack of 50 for £70-£80 in 2.4 metre lengths, or smaller packs if you're buying room by room!
Step 3 - Scoring
When starting out DIY plastering, a handy tip we were given was to score the walls. This is to help key in the plaster, and help maintain a grip with a more textured surface.
Since then, we've been advised that 'Blue Grit' is the way forwards. We haven't yet tried this but look to do a review on it in the future. Our first impressions? It's another expense. At £30 for a tub of 10 letres, it doesn't seem to be ' essential'. We've managed a whole house using our scoring method with no issues. Why spend when you don't have too!
Scoring the walls is pretty quick. The tips we were given was to cross-hatch the scores and make sure they are fairly deep. Saying that, we have been known to use a Stanley blade (out of laziness) which has been deep enough for the job - although was frowned upon by our tiktok viewers!
Step 4 - Scrim Tape
Scrim Tape is your saviour when it comes to cracks! It will allow movement in the boards/walls and also help prevent present cracks (common around doors frames/ window frames, and where the ceiling meets the wall) from coming through onto your new plastered surface.
It's relatively inexpensive, at £6 per roll, so worth doing to get that perfect finish!
We recommend adding this to any plaster-board seams, or on old walls, on any cracks, joins to the ceiling, and you can even scrim the corner beads, although this is not essential.
Step 5 - PVA
PVA is the last essential step of preparation. Despite feeling a little odd, PVA helps to create a 'film' and ceil in any debris/dust left on the wall. It also is absorbed by walls that are particularly dry. Walls that have had wallpaper on, or have been bonded will be particularly drying. The water in the PVA solution will be absorbed instead of the water out of the plaster, preventing your skim from cracking or falling off the wall.
Again, this step is done different by all plasterers we've spoken to. The PVA mixture, as long as water-down enough, will be fine for the job. We based our mixture off Google and the back of the PVA bottle - going for 1:3 ratio of PVA:Water.
Some plasterers will recommend a thicker mixture of 50:50, or we've been told 80:30, however from experience we've never tried this to find out the hype.
When PVA'ing it's important to know how dry your walls potentially are. We've had bonded walls, which are a lot drier, that we haven't pva'ed enough
and the plaster has cracked, where-as plaster-boards may not need any PVA theoretically. This is why we recommended to be safe, and apply 2 coats of PVA, allowing it to go tacky in-between each.
It's also important that the PVA remains tacky for when you plaster, so if you don't end up plastering straight away, make sure to top this up!
By following thse steps, we've found the poster goes on the nicest and haven't experienced any cracks, or problems with the plaster when applying to decorating.
We've posted videos demonstrating our DIY plastering journey, and are looking to post more plastering for beginner do's and don'ts that we've picked up along the way.
Happy plastering!
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