Plasterboard and painting

[Stephen]

Hi,

I have a downstairs toilet where there is a artexed cieling already in place.

I wish to cover the artex and the ceiling can easily be covered by a single sheet of plasterboard, so no joins or seams needed.

Rather than use screws, I would use No More Nails or sticks like poo to stick new sheet onto old sheet.

The walls will then be tiled on the wall up to ceiling level.

Now my question is this. Can bare plasterboard be painted or must it be skimmed first or do I use a specific type of plasterboard?

Stephen.

[Adrian]

It's normally skimmed. You could, I s'pose, just paint it - but I don't think the finish'd be great.

Why not just skim over the artex?

[Stephen]

because the existing plasterboard is damaged as well....

and I have never done skimming before so was looking for an easy solution.

[Nightjar]

One method of fitting plasterboard to just fill the joints then decorate directly onto the plasterboard. For that method, Gyproc do a primer for painting and a sealer for papering.

Colin Bignell

[fred]

In article , Stephen writes

Yes, you can paint it no prob.

However, I would strongly recommend that you screw the plasterboard into place, for one, it's not a light item and two, adhesives aren't fire proof so you don't want it to be the first thing coming down in a fire. The purpose made bugle headed screws can be driven just below flush without damage and filling and finishing the tiny dimples that remain is really no problem.

[meow2222]

So far so good - the tiles will hold the thing up permanently.

Emulsion straight onto PB is fine. The only downside is cleanability, you've got painted paper rather than painted plaster. So keep cleaning minimal, rely more on repainting.

NT

[chris French]

I think it's better primed with the appropriate primer first.

[chris French]

Not if you can't skim. I tried skimming a small ceiling once. Took me forever, and I was never happy with the finish. And hard work working above your head all the time. (And yes I could learn, but I haven't yet)

By contrast, taping, filling and sanding the plasterboard I've recently done was a cinch.

Yes I would, normally get it skimmed, but it was one and a bit walls, and it fitted better with the flow of the job to do it that way, and skimming a little bit is irrelatively expensive.

[fred]

In article , chris French writes

Three ways round that:

1. Use 1 or 2 sheets of taper edge PB (waste is unimportant as PB is cheap) and arrange to have just one join that is fibreglass mesh taped and filled with fine PB jointing compound. An extra wide (9 or 12") filling knife is the way to do this and get a good finish, overfill a little and sand back when dry. Amateurs can take a couple of goes to get it right.
2. Same as above with straight edge board but with a very slightly raised fill at the join tapering up from about 6" out, raising to

1-2mmin the middle then tapering out again on the other side. A little more skill is required to get this looking acceptable.

1. Batten the PB off the ceiling by about 6mm, 1 batten each side of the join, in line but 4" back from the edge. Wet the PB down at the edge with a spray, leave to penetrate and then screw a wider batten over the edge and screw tight to pull the PB at the join upwards. Leave this to dry and the result is a self supporting recessed join. Fill this as per

1.

[meow2222]

What problem have you encountered when omitting primer?

NT

[fred]

In article , chris French writes

Soz, yes, I realised you were an experienced hand when posting but thought it was still the most relevant point in the thread to put the note in :-)

[chris French]

In message , fred writes

Fair enough :-)