Plastering and skimming across West London

Skimming looks simple from the outside and it is anything but. The difference between a wall that looks right under a low winter sun and one that shows every ripple comes down to preparation, timing and how many years someone has spent with a trowel in their hand.

Steve has been plastering for forty years. He does the work himself alongside his apprentice, covers your floors and furniture before anything starts, and clears up properly at the end. Plastering is a messy trade and there is no getting round the dust, but your house should not still be showing it a week later.

What we skim and re-plaster

• Whole rooms taken back and re-skimmed where the existing surface has gone uneven, soft or covered in patches.
• New plasterboard on extensions, loft conversions and knock-throughs, taped, filled and skimmed to a flat finish ready for the decorators.
• Single ceilings and single walls. Small jobs get the same protection and the same standard as big ones.
• Cracks that keep coming back after filling, which usually means the plaster around them has lost its grip and needs looking at properly.
• Bathrooms, hallways and stairwells, including the awkward heights and angles that put some people off.

Lath and plaster repair on period homes

A lot of West London still has its original lath and plaster: horsehair-bound plaster pushed through timber laths, in some cases well over a century old. When it fails it does not usually go all at once. It softens, springs when you press it, cracks along the lath lines, and eventually a section lets go.

The quick answer is to board straight over the whole ceiling and be done in a day. Sometimes that genuinely is the right call. But often enough of the original is sound that it can be re-fixed, repaired and skimmed, which keeps the character of the room and costs you less.

Steve will tell you which one your ceiling actually needs. After forty years he has no reason to sell you the bigger job.

How the job runs

Everything gets covered first: floors, furniture, doorways and anything that stays in the room. Then the surface gets prepared, because skimming over a bad surface just gives you a smooth version of the same problem.

Fresh plaster needs time. It goes on pink, darkens as it takes up, and wants a few days before it sees paint, longer in a cold or unventilated room. Rushing a mist coat onto plaster that has not dried is one of the most common reasons a newly decorated room looks patchy afterwards, so Steve will tell you when it is genuinely ready.

Where we work

Plastering and skimming is available across Hanwell and the rest of West London.