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somebody

In message .com,
writes
Thanks for your replies folks. I'm going for the skim option - fingers
crossed for a class finish.

Phil

Good on yer :-)

A few thoughts....

As other posters have said, the flatter/clearer your walls are (ie no
sockets, pipes, screws/nails in walls etc) the better the final finish
will be. Plastering can also be a messy job, definately remove or
atleast cover anything and everything you don't want plastered :-)

Once the plaster has all dried (about a week usually) you'll want to
start painting. There is plenty of good advice on here about painting
fresh plaster. I've had a fair few rooms skimmed now and I find 50% matt
emulsion/50% water for the first coat. This takes the 'suck' out of the
plaster and seals it before 'real' paint etc. It looks crap but it is
needed. Don't even think about using PVA :-) This first coat is
sometimes called the '****' coat ('cos the paint has the consistency of
****).

You're now ready to paint for real. You've just paid good money to have
it skimmed so take care with the painting. Finished/dried paint has a
'thickness' to it. Each coat/roller/brush stroke adds to the thickness
of the layer on the wall. When you paint bear that in mind. It is easy
to have a wall all one colour, it is not so easy not to have ridges and
bumps and roller lines left behind. Try to maintain a consistent amount
of paint, per roller, per area covered - 'stretching' the paint out
across these areas is where your class finish is created. I'm guessing
here, but pass a very critical eye over your existing woodwork, doors,
ceilings, walls etc etc and you may actually see what I'm babbling on
about!

The best advice I can give to a novice (big assumption there) is to put
a small amount of paint on the roller and try to spread every single
roller of paint as far as it will possibly go. Expect to put on more
coats and forget all the 'one coat' crap on the advertising. Lots of
thin coats will give you a good finish, one thick coat will look like
she-ite. Once you've done it a few times, you'll get a feel for the
balance between how much paint on the roller and how far to try and
stretch it.

Personally, on fresh plaster, one **** coat and two proper coats does me
fine. Oh and I get comments saying how good the finish looks (from pro's
too:-)

Hth
Someone