Hi,
I've recently repaired the bathroom ceiling of my new house. In a couple of places the boards had come apart to leave a gap and a ridge. My investigations showed that not only did the previous owners not use scrim tape for the joins, they hadn't bothered to put any nails at all into the plaster boards along the joins. So, the two boards were just "flapping loose" even though they came together directly below a rafter. I've repaired the joins, putting in new plasterboard nails along the joins, scrimming, re-plastering and sanding. I've also put in extra nails to make sure that the ceiling is properly supported and repaired patches where the nails were showing through slightly.
However, I'm thinking about getting a plasterer in to skim the entire ceiling to give it a totally polished look. The problem is, most of the ceiling is covered in paint. It's not flaking, but I'm worried that simply skimming over it isn't a good idea. Will the new layer of plaster adhere etc?
What is my best approach? 1. Reskim as is, 2. labouriously scrape all of the paint off, 3. apply some kind of paint stripper to help get the old paint off, 4. pull the whole thing down and put fresh boards and skim up, 5. some other solution.
Do I need to consider anything else e.g. should anything be applied to the ceiling before fresh skim?
Many thanks in advance.