Artex on bathroom walls

[al]

A mate of mine wants to get his bathroom done (just to avoid confusion with anyone who's been reading postings from me about my own bathroom recently!!). The walls are all artex in there. He's had the following conflicting advice from several different workmen:

1) Chisel it all off manually as the artex won't support the weight of tiles 2) Sand it down smooth then tile 3) Melt it flat then tile 4) Completely skim over and tile on top

Now I know artex is nasty stuff and the first three options are likely to be hard work (and 3 sounds downright dangerous!!) ... however will option 2, 3 or 4 work at all with the weight of tiles hanging off them?

Is option 1 as bad as trying to hack off normal tiles or worse? Sounds like it will lead to re-plastering and skimming afterwards.

Any advice?

a

[Grunff]

That really depends how sound the wall is.

That would take for ever.

Why does he think it would melt? (it won't)

This is the cheapest/easiest approach. A good plasterer can skim a whole room in a day. That's £100-£200 to get a nice smooth wall in your room. As long as the artex is well stuck to the wall, this is the best option.

[al]

How does the artex bond to the wall in the first place?

and I should think create enough dust to last a decade!

God knows, would probably catch fire or kill you from the fumes!

It sounds sensible as long as it's strong and sound underneath. Unfortunately it's another 10mm off the size of the room, which for them is a little bit of an issue. They have a 1700mm bath at the moment, but it underlaps the wall by about 5mm at each end. B&Q incidentally said they wouldn't be interested in fitting a bathroom for them because of this!!

a

[Grunff]

It's an adhesive bond, working on the molecular level. If you want to know more, google for how adhesives bond.

Not at all - the skim need not be more that 3mm above the 'peaks' of the artex.

Cutting a bath in by 5mm (or even 15mm) each end is very easy.

[al]

Glad to hear it! Wonder why the B&Q guy was so negative ... he actually told them that "to be honest, they had a lot of bookings in the area and weren't that interested"! I'd have sent a bill to B&Q to charge the f**ker for wasting my time!

We had a guy from B&Q round last week and he was actually very good. Far too much money overall, but he was honest (ie. didn't tow the B&Q sales pitch) and professional - something far too hard to find these days ....

a

[Andrew Gabriel]

5) Steam or wash it off. Doesn't work with all artex and might depend how porus any paint on it is. I imagine a whole room would create one hell of a mess though.

I did 4, but you have to go over it first knocking off any particularly prominent bits. Skimming can't really hide much more than 5mm unevenness (ideally less).

[Andy Hall]

Was this kind of skimming covered in your plastering course or is this one for a full time plasterer?

I have one small area of artex in the utility room which seems to have begun to lift away from the plasterboard but has not peeled. Do you think that it's realistic to recover it (I thought of squirting dilute PVA behind) or is it better to rip it down? I don't have a love affair with it.......

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[J.Milton.Hayes]

Up & until about fifteen years ago it was common for artex to contain asbestos, see

[Andrew Gabriel]

It wasn't covered, but isn't that much different from plastering on sand/cement/lime scratch coat, which can be quite rough. First finish coat goes on and fills all the crevices up to the level of the peaks and you trowel off against those peaks so they're level with the surface. Ideally you want those peaks to all lay on the same plane so the first coat is flat. You couldn't polish this as the artex peaks would get in the way. Second coat forms a completely covering layer, perhaps 1-1.5mm thick, which can be polished off with the trowel.

The "full time plasterers" I hired before I could plaster screwed up by not knocking the artex peaks off first, and then realised they couldn't polish the wall without those peaks coming through and making ridges on the surface each time he polished over one. That was one of the reasons I decided I had to learn to plaster properly myself -- I wanted a better quality finish that I could get from the "full time plasterers" I could find.

Well, you could try repair, followed by reskim, followed by rip it down, depending how it goes. I would probably try a repair first, unless the artex pattern was something I particularly hated (and I've still got plenty of those left, Basketweave anyone?;-) Obviously, you might want to check the reason it's lifting away isn't something ongoing, and the weight of plaster on it might well speed up the process.

[Lobster]

Kind of does, actually. My recent experience at the weekend (qv other thread about Nitromors Artex remover, which I wouldn't bother with) showed that liberal application of a steam stripper caused it to go soft and gungy; still wouldn't come off the bloody ceiling though.

The plasterer I consulted actually refused to overskim; too much hassle, plus he reckoned it would all come down and I'd be whinging at him about it. He has a point in some respects; in some rooms, a lot of my artex has been applied on top of crappy woodchip, and the merest whiff of a stem stripper is enough to bring it off - very satisfying! I suspect that wet plaster on top of that would probably bring it off, too.

So if you do overskim, make sure the artex is really well bonded to its substrate.

David

[Stephen Gower]

Has anyone in the group tried using X-Tex ? I've been using the sister product, Home Strip, to remove lead-based gloss paint, and it works a treat, I'd certainly try X-Tex if I had an artex problem (as long as I was sure there was no asbestos issue), unless anyone here knows different.

[Owain]

"Andrew Gabriel" wrote | unless the artex pattern was something I particularly hated (and | I've still got plenty of those left, Basketweave anyone?;-)

Basketweave - count your blessings! I've got Drunken Fans overlaid on Swoopy Swirls.

Owain

[Lobster]

I have no experience of it at all, but given that it's apparently:

...Water-based Non-hazardous Non-caustic pH-neutral Solvent-free Non-flammable Non-combustible... etc etc and made by a company called ecosolutions, personally I'd have my doubts that it will shift Artex...!

David

[Nigel]

I have just finished stripping a cloakroom and utility room of artex , the thickness varied from 1cm to the thickness of a coat of paint. I used my trusty wallpaper steamer which removed the lot ( the thinest areas required quite a lot of scraping though)

Nige