Pollycell BaseCoat

[Marc Lee]

Does anyone have any experience or views on the Pollycell BaseCoat product?

I've stripped the wallpaper from the bedroom walls, SWMBO wants the walls painted. Thet aren't in too bad condition, but are a bit uneven due to peeled layers of emulsion and other general marks that are nicely covered by wallpaper.

I spent a long time in the other bedroom with the sander and polyfilla, the results were OK, but you can still see some marks on the walls. I wondered if this product would help - after a good sanding to remove high spots and loose material?

SWMBO saw an advert for it on TV, so she thinks it must be good!

TIA

[Al Reynolds]

I don't know, but I'm interested in the response. At least your partner only wants you to use basecoat - mine wants all the walls replastered! Al

[Barb]

I've used it. My house when I moved in was all really yukky wallpapered, so the lot has to come off.

I've done the main bedroom and bathroom, simply sanding, PVA'ing and 3-4 coats of good emulsion.

In the lounge I used Polycell BaseCoat, and the difference is noticeable. The really deep stuff it won't cover, but it conceals a good deal of the fairly shallow unevenness. I laid it on as thick as possible with a roller (brushing, I think, will leave marks), and in some places I did it twice - followed by a couple of coats of the colour.

It's certainly better than just ordinary paint, and a lot easier than re-plastering!

Good luck!

Barb.

[Paula]

We used this on our kitchen walls after having the kitchen redone and before painting. It's decent stuff, but it doesn't work miracles! I think you should plan on doing everything you did in the other bedroom to eradicate the uneven bits just as carefully (fill, sand etc). Then, if you use the Polycell Basecoat, you'll likely get a better result than the "OK" one from the other room. I'd recommend the Basecoat product, but in my experience, it's certainly not thick enough to "fill" any significant uneven areas.

For one small area of kitchen wall that was particularly bad - it had been covered by a cabinet before and wasn't any longer - we used the Polycell pre-mixed Finishing Skim product and were pleased with the results of that. (I realise we could have mixed our own from a bag a bit cheaper, but trading the cost of one container of the pre-mixed stuff off with the mess and uncertainty of getting the consistency right mixing our own for such a small area .... we chose the easy way!) So if you have any small patches that are particularly heinous, you could consider that.

Good luck - Paula

[David Hearn]

We're in the process of re-doing our bedroom and after stripping off the old paper, we can see that the walls are pretty poor. We'd planned on just putting lining paper up and painting, but I think that will still show lots of uneveness etc. The old paper was Manchester United paper which had their shield all over the place - but did a good job of hiding the wall's quality (lots of small images help break up a large wall and draw your eye away from otherwise noticable faults).

I'm wondering whether using this BaseCoat stuff before papering would help take out some of the uneveness. Of course, we'll sand/fill the larger holes, but do you think that it'll be useful to do, or a waste of time? Also, what's the sort of price of this stuff? I don't want to be using anything too expensive, especially as its a large room. Any cheaper similar stuff available?

Thanks

D

[Marc Lee]

Thanks for the info Paula.

David, it was £24 for 5 litres which claims to cover 25-40 SQ M.

I'll let you know how it goes on next week - got to get sanding first.