I've just stripped off the hideous tiles from our kitchen today. Total time taken from start to finish = 5 hours (which probably includes 2.5 hours of breaks + lots of striding around looking at what I'd done!). I bought a reduced price previous catalogue B&Q SDS drill from Argos for £46 using £30 of vouchers from the refund of the 'recalled' Challenge SDS. This one is listed as 3.5kg and although still heavy, was usable for this duration and made the job quite easy. It took me about 5 minutes to get a single tile off using a bolster and lump hammer - whereas I could get one off in a few seconds, maybe up to a minute for a difficult one which kept breaking off the edges rather than coming straight off (this was using a 2cm chisel bit included, not a proper tile remover chisel).
And before anyone suggests - we couldn't just tile over the old ones as we weren't going to cover all the tiles with new ones - only those behind the worktops, and then only 2/3 up to the wall unit height. There was a good wall (up to eye level) or so of tiles which we're not replacing.
Anyway - onto the reason for this post.
I now need to replaster. I've done this before using pre-mixed tubs from B&Q (never again, I've since realised just how much is needed, how pants the pre-mixed stuff is, and how much easier it is to use a sloppy mix from a bag).
Behind the worktops we want to tile up to 40cm, leaving 20cm under the wall units as painted. On walls with worktop but no wall units, we'll be doing the same, just painting all of the wall above the tiles. For wall which don't have any tiles, we'll be painting.
Now - what sort of plaster should I use for the bit under the tiles? In some places I'm back to bare brick where the plaster had blown and sometimes right next to it I've got good plaster where the previous occupants had blocked up a door etc. I've heard of bonding plaster - which seems to have chips of something in it? Is this suitable? However we also want to be able to paint the rest. I've never skimmed before, but done a (reasonable for me, but poor for a pro) job at patching before (now hidden by a wardrobe as it was obvious it was a patch!). How easy is it to blend two bits of plaster together? On the walls we're not tiling at chest level and above is blown vinyl (which we're stripping) - but I need to be able to blend the bit which used to be tiled with the bit above - I really don't want to reskim the whole kitchen. We'll probably try lining the walls where we paint actually. It's worked well in all the other rooms, and may help cover some blemishes.
I'm not expecting a pro finish - and I only have 4 days remaining to get as much as I can done (I'm expecting now to only get the plastering and worktops replaced in that time). Also, I realised I need to leave the plaster to dry first - so we'll leave the tiling/painting for a while first.
One final question (honest) - as a last resort - what sort of price would you expect for a plasterer to re-plaster a kitchen with units etc still in place, blending in against good plaster (ie. all above chest height)? The kitchen is a galley style, open each end, wall units on one side, none on the other (though windows + boiler). Kitchen is about
4m long and shouldn't need any plastering above about 1.2m, and in some places down to the floor. I'm in Surrey.So - any suggestions?
Thanks (off to bag up the piles of tiles laying all over the kitchen now)
David