Ceilings and how to tidy them up

[Socksitis]

Next question lovely people. The ceiling, lath and plaster, all faily intact, but it has had several coats of something over the life and there are flakes and bubbles. I have scraped with the amazing stanley knife scraper. Under the skim - some has come off an some has not it is sound. My options are to finish the scraping which gets off all the flakes and loose. I could then prime with DG 27 primer and skim heritage plaster over the area- I am not good enough to do that. Or I am thinking of a wash down with sugar soap - I have read the thread, then paint with something that will go over anything, like seciltek?

Others must have had flaky bumpy ceilings, what have you done?

 

[Flyfisher]

We have one bedroom in which part of the ceiling had been mildly water damaged due to a leaking roof. It was also badly stained due to mould growth.

I'm also not good enough to skim a ceiling so after cleaning it up as best I could I decided to cover it up with lining paper. Unfortunately, I don't seem to have a 'before' photo (which is unusual because I take them by gazillion - or perhaps that's the problem!) but I found this 'after' photo (excuse the temporary curtains!):



The papered section is the one above the hanging wall picture and it's just possible to see that it has covered the damage and staining without 'flattening' the basic texture of the underlying plaster so that it looks pretty much identical to the unpapered adjacent sections of ceiling.

 

[Easrow]

We filled the biggest cracks and dodgy bits with normal easy sand filler and jointing compound over larger areas as it can go on nice and thin and doesn't take away the shape/imperfections of the original ceiling. Then as above used lining paper. As it's quite thick the joins can be well hidden. It looks good when it's done just like the photo above and probably holds it all together nicely too.

 

[noj]

Sorry to jump in on someone else's topic - but it could help the OP too - what weight lining paper?

Do you go heavy that may flatten everything, or light that may show more 'period features' than you might have wanted?

One of our bedrooms appears to have been done with random bits of thin newspaper during the war (more papier mache than lining) and then painted - it actually doesn't look too bad, I won't be removing it, but do want to go the lining paper route in the main one.

Thanks

 

[Flyfisher]

Sorry to jump in on someone else's topic - but it could help the OP too - what weight lining paper?

Just checked my records (well it was four years ago, too long for me to remember the details!) and it seems I bought "Erfurt Vario Plus Non Woven Lining Paper" from decoratingdirect.co.uk.

This is the stuff - http://www.decoratingdirect.co.uk/viewprod/m/MAVNWLPV/ - and it appears to be a 1400 weight paper. They also make many other types of lining paper in various grades.

I confess that I was a little concerned at first that it might have been too thick and therefore 'smooth out' the ceiling texture but as the photograph shows this was not the case in practice, though different ceilings might require different grades depending on the desired result.

Do you go heavy that may flatten everything, or light that may show more 'period features' than you might have wanted?

Personal choice, I'd say.

In my case I was only papering one section of the ceiling so was trying to match the other sections. In retrospect, I was probably lucky to get a good match first time. If papering an entire ceiling then I think the choice of paper weight would be easier as whatever the result it would at least be consistent across the whole ceiling.

I've also used the same paper on walls and the result was much smoother, but then so were the walls, so in my limited experience it's strong enough to consolidate 'flaky' plaster yet thin enough to reflect the 'character' of the underlying surface.

 

[noj]

Great reply
Thanks