Interior Painting
Rooms, hallways, ceilings, kitchens, bathrooms and woodwork prepared and painted in two full coats of trade paint.
Plastering, London
Cracked, blown or Artexed walls and ceilings? A plasterer and a decorator from one firm fixes both
Skim coats over sound plaster and Artex, plasterboard where the old lath and lime has gone, patch repairs around new sockets and pipework, and full re-plastering of rooms. Then we paint it once it has dried.
Five-star reviews from London homes
What customers say once the plastering is finished
Twenty-two doors and drawer fronts taken away, sprayed and rehung in a week. The finish is closer to factory than brush.
PriyaKitchen doors sprayed, Brent
Three floors of Victorian hallway with a lot of spindles. Tidy, on time each morning, and the woodwork is glass smooth.
TomHallway, stairs and landing, Archway
A mansion-block flat with high ceilings and a concierge to keep happy. Dust sheets everywhere, lift protected, done in four days.
EleanorWhole flat repaint, City of Westminster
Sash windows burnt off, primed and finished in an oil-based gloss. They said it would take the weather better than the quick water-based stuff and so far it has.
DavidExterior woodwork, Bexley
A wide-pattern paper in the living room with the joins matched perfectly across the chimney breast. Very careful work.
SofiaWallpaper, Barking
Blown plaster hacked off, reboarded and skimmed, then painted a week later once it had dried. One firm for both jobs saved a lot of chasing.
JamesPlastering and paint, London
Plastering work we take on in London homes and flats
The jobs come in four sizes. Patching: a hole where a radiator came off, chases for new wiring, a damaged corner. Skimming: a 2 to 3mm coat of multi-finish over sound but tired plaster or over Artex, to give a flat surface for paint. Reboarding: taking down a failed lath and plaster ceiling or a soft wall, fixing plasterboard, taping the joints and skimming. Full re-plaster: hacking off to brick and applying a two-coat backing and finish, used where damp has ruined the old plaster or the wall was never plastered properly.
We also do dot-and-dab plasterboard on solid walls, sound-reducing board in flats, and float-and-set in period rooms where a modern board would look wrong against original cornice.
What to do about Artex
Artex textured coatings were popular from the 1960s to the mid 1980s, and coatings from before 1984 can contain white asbestos. We never sand or scrape old Artex. The options are to skim over it with a bonding agent (PVA or a proprietary primer such as Thistle Bond-it), which encapsulates it and leaves a flat ceiling, or to overboard the ceiling with new plasterboard and skim that. If a customer wants it removed, that is a job for a licensed asbestos contractor first, and we come in afterwards.
How a skim and paint job runs
- Walls and ceilings checked for hollow plaster, damp and movement. Furniture moved, floors sheeted.
- Loose plaster removed, holes filled with bonding, edges and corners beaded.
- Surface primed with PVA or a bonding primer so the skim does not dry too fast.
- Skim applied in two passes and trowelled up to a smooth finish.
- Drying: a skim takes three to seven days in a heated London flat, longer in winter or on a solid external wall. Full re-plaster on brick can take weeks.
- Mist coat of thinned emulsion, then the interior painting proper with two full coats.
Areas covered by our plasterers
Plastering is done across the same patch as the decorating, from central London out to the suburbs and towns we cover within about 20 miles. Period terraces in Islington and Archway, mansion blocks in Westminster, interwar semis in Bexley and Sutton, and post-war estates in Barking and Brent each bring their own plaster problems, and we have worked with all of them.
How it runs
Plastering in four stages, each one on the quote
Survey, prepare, finish, check. The first decides the price, the second decides the finish, and the last is done with you in the room.
Inspect
Hollow, damp and cracked plaster mapped room by room; the fix chosen for each.
Strip and board
Failed plaster off, plasterboard or beads fixed, joints taped.
Skim
Two-pass multi-finish trowelled flat, corners and reveals sharp.
Dry and paint
Left to dry properly, mist coat, then two coats of your colour.
Quick Quote
Ready to book plastering in London?
One message with the sizes and the state of the surfaces is enough. The quote names the stages and the products.
On the tools
Plastering: the stages of the work
Surfaces before and during the work: what gets stripped, filled and primed before any colour goes near it.
Where we work
Plastering across London and the surrounding towns
Plastering is booked across the whole working radius, from the centre of London to the ring of towns about 20 miles out. Below is one stretch of the coverage list, in order of distance from the base.
- Chiswick
- Catford
- Canning Town
- Wood Green
- Acton
- Wimbledon
- Tottenham
- Finchley
- Leytonstone
- Walthamstow
- Mitcham
- Wembley
- Beckenham
- Brent
- Morden
- Edmonton
Related services
Work that often goes with plastering
The three services that most often share a quote with this one. Each has its own page; the sequence is planned as one job.
Painter Decorator
Whole homes, flats and single rooms decorated end to end: walls, ceilings, woodwork, wallpaper and exteriors.
Rendering Painting
Render, pebbledash, stucco and painted brick cleaned, repaired and finished in two coats of breathable masonry paint.
Questions
Plastering questions, answered before you book
Anything not covered here is answered by email through the contact page, and the longer answers live in our decorating guides.
How long does new plaster take to dry before painting?
A skim coat over existing plaster is usually ready in three to seven days once it has turned uniformly pale pink. Full re-plaster on solid brick can take several weeks. We do not paint until it has dried through, and we mist coat first so the paint bonds.
Can you skim over Artex?
Yes, that is the most common way to deal with it. The Artex is sealed with a bonding primer and skimmed with multi-finish. We never sand or scrape textured coatings because older ones can contain asbestos.
Should I skim or replace a cracked ceiling?
If the ceiling is lath and plaster and it sags or sounds hollow when tapped, it is safer to take it down and reboard. If it is sound with cracks, scrim tape over the cracks and a skim is enough. We check before quoting.
Do you plaster and then paint, or do I need two trades?
One firm does both. The plasterer skims, the room is left to dry, and the decorators come back to mist coat and paint. It saves the usual gap of chasing two contractors and the finish is planned as one job.
How much dust does plastering make?
Hacking off old plaster makes a lot, and we sheet the room and run extraction. Skimming makes very little. Rubbing down between coats is done with dust-extracted sanders where any sanding is needed at all.
Quick Quote
Five-star reviews from London homes
Plastering: tell us the surfaces and we will price them
What needs plastering, roughly how big it is, and what state it is in now. That is enough for a written quote; a visit is booked for anything bigger.
- A written price for the plastering itemised by stage
- The product named on the quote, not "paint"
- Start and finish dates given with the price