Plaster or drywall?

[Dave Baker]

Trying to decide what to do about the walls the previous incumbent artexed to stop his kids running their mucky hands over them. It's a vicious surface which can flay the skin off your hands if you so much as lean against it. House is a 1920s semi and the plaster consists of a soft and friable base coat with shells and god knows what in it with a fairly decent hard skim coat. However getting the artex off without damagaing anything else is a bugger. I've tried scraping but that also damages the skim coat. Removing the whole skim coat and the artex at the same time leaves the soft base coat which is blown in patches anyway which need fixing and would need PVA to stabilise it. So is it easier to just rip the lot off back to the brick and plasterboard it or try and retain as much of the base coat as possible?

If I rip it back to brick I can drywall it with dot and dab myself with the help of a mate and if I leave the basecoat and fix the blown bits I'll need a plasterer to skim it again at god knows how much per diem. I'm thinking rip the lot off would be quicker and cheaper. My main unknown is how you fix shelves etc when you've got drywall rather than a solid plastered wall.

Secondly has anyone noticed that corporation tips are now doing their utmost to prevent you taking DIY stuff like doors, windows, old plaster etc there? It's classified as trade waste and they want you to hire a skip instead. I think I'll just have to manage taking it a bit at a time in plastic sacks and hope the jobsworths don't stop me.

[George]

Dont rip it off...too much mess and dust not to mention the dust mites.

Chase the walls and fit screw battens to the wall then plasterboard it and plaster.

[Andy Hall]

At that stage, I think so.

Probably. If you are going to drywall, you still need to get it skimmed or you can tape and joint it. I found taping and jointing reasonably easy to do but does take some time. If you take care, you end up with a paintable or paperable surface where the joints don't show.

Not a problem. Just longer screws and plugs. It's best if the plugs go through the plasterboard and through to the brick surface.

I have occasionally been asked whether it's trade waste and told them no because it isn't.

That depends on whether it really is from trade activity. AFAIK, it is not defined by the material itself.

I wouldn't do that. Why waste time trying to do something that you shouldn't need to do.

[Andrew Gabriel]

You can skim over artex -- you don't need to take it off. If you start taking the base coat off, you'll always find the next bit is blown too, until you've ripped it all off. Blown areas don't matter providing they aren't too large and the plaster doesn't move if you push against it. The FAQ does have a tip for glueing blown areas back on.

[Lurch]

On Wed, 25 Jul 2007 23:58:29 +0100, "Dave Baker" mused:

Stand there and argue. If it's not trade waste it's not trade waste. Alternatively, sling at the gates and scarper, better than chucking it in some random hedgerow.

I used to take garden rubbish after a good weekend of trimming bushes and trees all weekend to the tip in a luton with 'Appliance World' written all over it and they claimed it was trade waste as I was in a commercial vehicle. The fact that 'Appliance World' doesn't do gardening escaped them.

You can get permits to go to the tip with if you are looking like trade, and if you insist it isn't trade but they think it is then you can fill out yet another form to say it definitely isn't trade waste.