hardwall tips

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chesblues

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i do all trades for my work basically anything that needs doing on someones house
i'm not a experienced plasterer (only self taught so probably have some bad habits) and do plastering whenever it is needed on a job
but this normally only entails doing a reskim or back to bare brick, dot and dab and skim
i'm very much a perfectionist and my skimming is to a fairly good standard but i haven't done much in the way of using hardwall and have a large wall to do
it's the hall stairs and landing wall that goes the full length of the house 9 meters long 2.8 meters high at hall and landing but higher up the stairs @ 3.1 meters
the brickwork is all over the place (30mm lumps and swamps in the wall) so plaster boarding is no good as it would sit to far off the wall and not match up with the first and second floor stairs which are above each other so i was going to hardwall it, it's back to brick, cleaned, and pva'd

being as the wall is so bad mostly up the stairs the top and bot walls prob only 15mm out whats the best process i.e should i start with a couple of coats just on the stair section where it will be the deepest then poss only one all over(there is light from windows shining top and bottom right across the wall so it will need to be pretty flat)

would this wall be considered large to do on your own if i was as quick as you guys, i don't mind a bit of graft but to me it looks pretty large so obviously just worried about it going off before i have got it flat (just brought the diamond float from refina for the job and already have a long float which i use for screeding and several sizes of featheredge)
how many coats would you expect to have to do on a job like this, the max thickness and at what point in drying do you put the next coat on
in what time frame should i be aiming for
now if takes a while and i had to skim it another day would suction be a major problem and should i then pva/prime it and would you dampen it

sorry if there are alot of obvious questions and it took a while to read but i want to get in my head exactly what i need to do before i start

cheers
 
yes i did think it looked are large area and not ideal for for someone who hasn't done much with backing plasters
the main reason that i was thinking of not dot & dabbing was that i am trying to match the two sets of stairs (1st & 2nd floor) and to keep the wall straight would mean over lapping the wood on the stairs with the plasterboard, there would still be some wood on shown still but not a lot, where as with hardwall i could gain the 12.5mm of plasterboard thickness back
i will have to get the spirt level on it again and see exactly how much i would have to overlap the board

thanks for the quick replies
 
Where I work we don't often dot and dab, I'd say 90% of our Walls are floated. The only advice I can give is to fill out the areas where it is too deep first. I would more than likely do strips of hardwall every 2m that are floor to ceiling height that are levelled up. Then in fill using these strips as a ruling off point with a feather edge. Just bear in mind that you can obviously scrape off these strips when ruling off so be careful not to press to hard on them. Working in sections will cut down on the chances of it going off too quick but it will still be hard. As for the skimming day after on hard wall is a ball ache plenty of pva is a necessity as is speed.
 
i would run a screed along the string then screeds off that and work away from the stairs you could always use strips of plasterboard for your screeds if your not that confident it can be fiddly round stairwells
 
AsREDaS said:
Where I work we don't often dot and dab, I'd say 90% of our Walls are floated. The only advice I can give is to fill out the areas where it is too deep first. I would more than likely do strips of hardwall every 2m that are floor to ceiling height that are levelled up. Then in fill using these strips as a ruling off point with a feather edge. Just bear in mind that you can obviously scrape off these strips when ruling off so be careful not to press to hard on them. Working in sections will cut down on the chances of it going off too quick but it will still be hard. As for the skimming day after on hard wall is a ball ache plenty of pva is a necessity as is speed.
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thanks for the good advice that was just the kind of method that i was thinking of myself and as madmonk said starting from the stairs where the plaster depth is critical and working out from there,as there is still lots other jobs that i have to do on the job i.e new floor,new door frames and doors throughout and the other much easier walls to plasterboard,and 3 ceilings that i've boarded to skim and the other walls if i did hardwall that wall first then do the other jobs before trying to skim it,what sort of time frame do you think it might be before it is easier to skim due to less suction (i will probably try and get a mate in to do all the mixing cleaning etc so that i can hopefully skim the same day but i would be interested to know in case

i knew that a fair few people would say don't tackle it or get a plasterer in and while that's not bad advice as it is a difficult and large wall but i'll never improve if i bottle it every time i get a difficult looking job and wouldn't be able to do 99% of the jobs that my clients ask me to do if i hadn't had the balls to have a go at them(mostly on my own house while i was a sheet metal worker)
now i can do nearly any job be it new bathrooms, kitchens, central heating systems, bricklaying, roofing etc etc to a very good standard, i've only been working for myself doing home improvements for 5 years but i've never advertised and all work comes from word of mouth yet i have so much work at the moment that if a jobs bigger than a weeks worth i'm having to book it for jan next year as i have no room left on my calender as clients are willing to wait knowing that they'll get a good job,now i would have got a plasterer in to help me push the job along and so i could pick up some tips, if only i knew a good plasterer, i'm sure there's lots about unfortunately i don't know any and all the plasterering jobs that i see on domestic jobs are not as good as i can do anyway in fact most of them are pretty crap with defects all over the place, one client who i plastered for had had 5 other plastering jobs done 2 by companys 2 by two plasterers and 1 by someone on there own and he said my plastering was by far the best yet i wouldn't dare call myself a plasterer (even though i get lots of jobs as a recommended plasterer) as i know that i still have plenty to learn
so unless there's a very good plasterer on here from birmingham i would be very apprehensive about just getting any old plasterer in who might not do a good job
 
chesblues said:
thanks for the good advice that was just the kind of method that i was thinking of myself and as madmonk said starting from the stairs where the plaster depth is critical and working out from there,as there is still lots other jobs that i have to do on the job i.e new floor,new door frames and doors throughout and the other much easier walls to plasterboard,and 3 ceilings that i've boarded to skim and the other walls if i did hardwall that wall first then do the other jobs before trying to skim it,what sort of time frame do you think it might be before it is easier to skim due to less suction (i will probably try and get a mate in to do all the mixing cleaning etc so that i can hopefully skim the same day but i would be interested to know in case

i knew that a fair few people would say don't tackle it or get a plasterer in and while that's not bad advice as it is a difficult and large wall but i'll never improve if i bottle it every time i get a difficult looking job and wouldn't be able to do 99% of the jobs that my clients ask me to do if i hadn't had the balls to have a go at them(mostly on my own house while i was a sheet metal worker)
now i can do nearly any job be it new bathrooms, kitchens, central heating systems, bricklaying, roofing etc etc to a very good standard, i've only been working for myself doing home improvements for 5 years but i've never advertised and all work comes from word of mouth yet i have so much work at the moment that if a jobs bigger than a weeks worth i'm having to book it for jan next year as i have no room left on my calender as clients are willing to wait knowing that they'll get a good job,now i would have got a plasterer in to help me push the job along and so i could pick up some tips, if only i knew a good plasterer, i'm sure there's lots about unfortunately i don't know any and all the plasterering jobs that i see on domestic jobs are not as good as i can do anyway in fact most of them are pretty crap with defects all over the place, one client who i plastered for had had 5 other plastering jobs done 2 by companys 2 by two plasterers and 1 by someone on there own and he said my plastering was by far the best yet i wouldn't dare call myself a plasterer (even though i get lots of jobs as a recommended plasterer) as i know that i still have plenty to learn
so unless there's a very good plasterer on here from birmingham i would be very apprehensive about just getting any old plasterer in who might not do a good job
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dont know why your here asking advise by the sounds of it you shud be teaching us.
 
@ chesblues glad I could offer some kind of method for you, and as you say your floating won't improve if you bottle it. So kudos goes to you for even contemplating tackling it. Believe me if you conquer a wall like this, there will be no stopping you!!
 
rockhardsolidplastering said:
dont know why your here asking advise by the sounds of it you shud be teaching us.
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not totally sure what you ment by that obviously i couldn't teach anyone on hear anything about plastering
if you was saying that you thought i was blowing my own trumpet that wasn't what i was trying to do at all, just saying that every time someone says that they have had some plastering done i have a look at it hoping to see a good job then i would get there number and see if i could get them on one of my jobs so i could ask some questions watch and learn some better techniques (my end product is half decent but i'm not that quick at the mo especially when i see some of the meters squared people on hear say they do on hear , but you can get away with that when you are only doing domestic i am getting there but would love to work along side a good plasterer to really learn the trade and see how it should be done) but they are always sub standard jobs imo

do most of the good plasterers generally work on site rather than domestic, is that why i don't seem to see any decent jobs done

or if it was because i said i had a lot of work a the moment (i wasn't bragging just making the point that because i had the bottle to try and take on jobs that i wasn't in my comfort zone doing and after a couple of times doing said job at a loss due to having to take my time thinking my through it and working as long as it takes to do a good job i can now happily take on them jobs) only about a fifth of that is plastering work the rest is for other various trades, the big benefit of doing a lot of different trades is someone recommends you as a plasterer but by the time you've looked at a job plastering a room i've sold myself and bagged painting it after re-glossing the room and doing a complete bathroom refit and tiling that they were thing of having done

i have only just got to the stage of having this much work after 5 years building up my client base all my hard work and long hours are finally paying off
 
yep good for you i mean i wish i could get a "good"tradesman in just to get some tips cos its as easy as that be quite frank you came across as a proper know all who is better than the few "good" trasesman you have met .im willing to bet most of the time you work alone.


by the way just my oppinion :RpS_biggrin:
 
Didn't see your bit about time frames, for me it's always better to skim hardwall the same day, due to the fact that hardwall surface dries quicker than bonding, browning etc allowing you to skim it. I'm not saying you can't do it day after it will just be a he'll of a lot harder due to it being dry all the way through. Major issues day after are it will suck all the moisture out of your skim before you have finished laying down your first coat. Pva will slow it down somewhat, but I've had times when I've been sent to skim out an extension that someone else has floated with hardwall and pva'ing 3 times hardly made a difference. Then again that was floated on thermalite block so that speeds up drying more. Lately if it's already gone off I've been using a mixture of pva, sbr and water which helps but it is still hard to skim big areas.Long winded answer I know but if possible skim same day.
 
AsREDaS said:
@ chesblues glad I could offer some kind of method for you, and as you say your floating won't improve if you bottle it. So kudos goes to you for even contemplating tackling it. Believe me if you conquer a wall like this, there will be no stopping you!!
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keep looking at that wall ever time i pass it while doing other work there it does look quite daunting(even skimming it it would be by far the biggest i had tackled), if i do hardwall it instead of plasterboarding i'm under no illusions about how difficult it will be with very limited hardwalling practice so i really appreciate the advice and i will read any other threads to get as much information into my brain so i'm prepaired as best i can be for if i do go for it, just thought while typing this there is the rest of that wall under the bottom stairs which i was going to plasterboard i could hardwall that first for some practice then decide if i think i could handle it
 
I'd go for the practice run on the other wall, at least you will see how it reacts once you have it on, as well as how it reacts once you start skimming it.
 
rockhardsolidplastering said:
yep good for you i mean i wish i could get a "good"tradesman in just to get some tips cos its as easy as that be quite frank you came across as a proper know all who is better than the few "good" trasesman you have met .im willing to bet most of the time you work alone.


by the way just my oppinion :RpS_biggrin:
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i do work alone which is the problem and the point that i was making i never get chance to work with or see other skilled men at work which makes it very difficult to know if your going about things the right way, i did work on a house just after i had started up and there was an italian guy there who was a member of dulux and his painting was amazing,i had never seen painting/glossing like it and completely changed what i considered to be a good job he was a really nice bloke and gave me loads of tips which improved my painting massively i know i'll never get to his level but now i've seen how good it can be done it gives me something to strive for

i'm definitely not a know it all i'm believe it or not a nice bloke who's obviously rubbish at putting his point across , mind i always was crap at english
the main reason i work alone is when i started i didn't know whether i could make a go of it or not and also didn't have enough work for two it's a lot easier when you've only got to find enough work for one, it's nice when i do work with someone so you can have a laugh and some banter but it would be a problem and not very fair on whoever i had working with me when i did something like a bathroom when unless it's a large bathroom there's only just enough room for one
 
nick0412 said:
get someone else to do it. watch them and learn for next time
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i definately would but i don't know any plasterers good or bad and as i would be sticking them on one of my clients jobs i would only want to do it if i knew that they would do a good job
i'm sure that if i did find someone in the yellow pages or whatever they would be fine but as i said previously the handfull of other jobs that i have seen was only easy skim jobs by a recommended to them plasterer and they just wasn't that good trust me if you had seen them you would agree, by me saying that they wasn't up to my standards isn't me giving it the big'n,
the one client had one small wall and a ceiling the plasterer had done the wall and half the ceiling one day and came back to finish the ceiling the next with the biggest eyesore of a joint you have ever seen
i was hoping that when i posted asking if there was anyone from birmingham on the site i would get the response of i'm your man done loads of hardwall, oh well (i did notice that someone was called brum something on some of the forums thought he might be from brum)
as asredas has informed me hardwall dries out a lot quicker than bonding and browning am i just being a tw*t thinking that i have to use hardwall which sounds like it's harder to use on a big area, it's a i think 1930's house so quiet old bricks and i thought i read use hardwall on high suction and old brickwork
 
if your looking for someone on the forum from brum to do the job ,do another post in plasterers looking for plasterers

This is the place where other plasterers can post jobs they don't want to do or need a hand on.
 
McPlaster said:
Sheet metal it. You'll wish you had when you come to skim it. Get a plasterer in, hope this helps.[/QUOTE

yep you're probably right, i guess after reading all the advice i'll have to admit defeat on this one i was keen to have a go but i'm obviously out of my league with a wall like that and using hardwall looks like my new refina diamond float will have to be put away until i can try it on a nice small sq uncomplicated wall

cheers martinemj for the tip on plasterers looking for plasterers didn't know about that, and thanks to everyone for the good advice and if i post again i'll try not too sound like such a dick
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or gyprime the whole lot.

or sand and cement scratch with a tonnow of waterproofer. then float it out the next day.

or use one coat, even if u float it and skim over it, it holds up forever.
 
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