Condition of walls required for plaster skimming?

[GTS]

I plan to have the walls of a room skimmed so they can be painted over. Having stripped off the old paper I am left with patchy painted walls, where some paint came of with the paper and some remains stuck fast. Will a plasterer be able to skim walls in this condition? Also in a few places the plaster appears to be blown, and there are a couple of small areas where the plaster has come off, revealing the bricks underneath.Will the plasterer be able to patch these at the same time as skimming, or should they be patched-up prior to him coming? TIA Graham

[BigWallop]

It might be best to strip the whole lot and start again, mate. Or at least tap the walls all over to find all the really loose plaster and pull it off back to the brick work.

Patching looks messy for small areas, and you'll never get a really smooth finish to paint on. A very thin skim coating is also prone to cracking and peeling after a short time as well.

If you can find the large chunks of loose plaster, and peel them off, then the larger areas are more easily filled and smoothed to match the rest of the wall.

[G Cadman]

Stripping of all the old plaster can be a bind, holes can be patched with a bonding coat. However, if some of that plaster is already coming off then I would guess you can suspect that other bits may also be loose. As far a plasters time is concerned it is easier to to work from a base that is all the same material. Differenent thicknesses and types of plaster never give you a great finish. If you are taking all the plaster off why not think about putting plaster board back up in its place and then getting the plaster in to skim it for you. Alternatively you will have to have a base coat of plaster put up first (normally refered to as browning - A plaster that is suitable for backgrounds of various suctions) this will be left over night to go off, and then he should return and put two coats of plaster up, one directly after the other (normally multi finish). Plaster board will only require skimming with board finish.

Regards. G

[GTS]