plasterboard joint prep before skimming?

[nafuk]

Hi, I am soon to skim over some plasterboarded walls. After putting self adhesive fibre-glass tape over the joints of the plasterboard do I need to fill the joints in the same way you would if you were taping and filling the joints and not skimming?

I have used paper corner tape for the corners and wall-ceiling joints.

Thank you

[Andrew Gabriel]

Depends what gap you left between the boards. If you left a 1/4" gap, then use bonding coat to fill the gap, and push enough in that it will go right through the board thickness and form a good bond between the board edges. Put the scrim tape over this and skim when the bonding coat is set or nearly set, but still wet. If there's no gap or insufficient gap between boards to get plaster in, just apply the scrim tape and then skim over it.

I don't think that will work well with plaster. It's for when you aren't plastering. You should use scrim tape.

BTW, scrim tape is only self-adhesive when you first unwrap it (if it ever was). After it's been exposed to plaster dust, etc, it no longer is. What you do is smear plaster down the path for the tape, dab a length of scrim in place into the wet plaster, and then plaster over it -- the plaster holds it in place, and will do so more effectively than any adhesive on the tape.