Polycell SmoothOver

[Farmer Giles]

We inherited a ceiling in our house that has previously been painted with some form of texture coat. It looks pretty awful, so now I want to do something about it.

It seems impossible to remove (I have tried) so I want to cover it up if I can. The obvious answer is to replaster the entire ceiling, which seems quite a difficult and messy job. The 'ripples' on the texture are not particularly deep, so I was wondering about using this SmoothOver stuff from Polycell.

Anyone done this, or knows anything about how effective the product is?

[Midge]

Our house had artex on every ceiling. Tried a water based textured coat remover (X-Tex) on one ceiling but that was horribly messy to use and not that effective. Ended up having to do a final sand to get it reasonably smooth, and then line it with paper. Regretted ever attempting it.

Since then, I just bit the bullet and got a good plasterer in to skim each room ceiling as we got around to decorating them. He wasn't that messy or expensive. Suppose I ought to give it a go myself but its one of those skills where to do it right (esp. ceilings) takes a lot of practice, and you might not get enough on your own house.

Dunno about the Polycell stuff but a quick google turned up some very critical reviews of it:

Also consider what lighting you intend to use and whether it will make any imperfections look worse.

HTH Midge.

[Farmer Giles]

Thanks for that, Midge. I used the X-Tex stuff - quite dear and not very effective. To be fair to it, though, I don't think that our stuff is artex just some texture coating. I think you're probably right about the skimming option - those reviews for SmoothOver are not exactly encouraging!

Our lighting does tend to show up any imperfections on the ceiling, so I think I'll look at the your suggestion. Thanks for the advice.

If I do have a go at skimming this myself - I've done a small amount of plastering in the past - anyone got any comments about putting a coating of PVA on the ceiling first?

[Trigger]

Its a naff product, difficult to apply. I wetted it to make it smoother and it was still not anyone. Once on I let it dry and used a sander to get out the imperfections as the tool bought with the product was naff. Trouble is the real plaster: thistlebond or whatever is too much for my need.

[Tinkerer]

I was surprised to see bad reviews of this product. I can only speak as I find. We have gone from paper to paint on the walls of two rooms and some of the plaster under the paper was pretty ropey. We used Smoothover, found it very easy to use and are quite satisfied with the result. Bear in mind however that this was on walls - whether it would be so easy on ceilings I could not say.

[Farmer Giles]

Fair enough, and thank you, but I think on the balance of opinion I'll give it a wide berth.

[lisastar]

responding to

lisastar wrote: Hi, I know this may sound a bit strange to say but how about just sanding the design off the ceiling. A bit messy and quite a bit of work but this could be a last resort idea.

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[Farmer Giles]

I think that would be possible, but some of this stuff may contain asbestos fibres, so not a route I fancy.