Ceiling Overboarding and Full Wall Re-Skim by a Plasterer in Hammersmith and Fulham

This project took place in a period property in Kensington and Chelsea, with the work targetted for homeowners across Hammersmith and Fulham (W6). The room — most likely a kitchen or rear reception — featured two windows overlooking a garden, exposed brick and blockwork walls, and an existing ceiling that had deteriorated beyond a simple re-skim. The property showed all the hallmarks of an older London home undergoing a full renovation strip-out, with original plaster removed and the substrate left bare prior to the plastering team's arrival.

When the London Plastering Service team arrived on site, the room was in full strip-out condition. The walls had been taken back to bare brick and blockwork, with only patches of the original plaster remaining in isolated areas — visible as flaking, uneven fragments across the wall faces. The existing ceiling had been stripped or was failing, and new plasterboard panels had already been installed in a grid formation across the ceiling joists, with the board joints clearly visible and taped with orange jointing tape. Recessed downlighter holes were cut into the new boards. The floor was sheeted with dust sheets, and bags of multi-finish plaster were stacked near the skirting ready for use.

The scope of work for this project covered two primary elements: the newly installed ceiling plasterboard required a full skim coat to produce a flat, paint-ready surface, and the stripped walls throughout the room required a full bonding and skim treatment to bring them back to a sound, smooth finish. For the ceiling, the new 12.5mm plasterboard panels had been fixed to the joists in a standard grid layout. All board joints and screw fixings required filling and taping before a two-coat skim could be applied across the entire ceiling plane. For the walls, the exposed brick and block substrate meant a bonding coat was required across all wall faces before any finish skim could be applied. Pockets of remaining old plaster also needed to be assessed — any hollow or poorly adhered sections would need to be removed before bonding proceeded. Additionally, the area around the two window reveals required particular care, as the junction between the new plasterwork and existing window frames needed to be neatly formed and finished. The recessed downlighter positions in the ceiling were also worked around to ensure clean, circular cuts were maintained through the skim coat. The team also managed the preparation of the PVA bonding wash across the porous brick surfaces, mixing and applying bonding plaster, and ultimately finishing all surfaces with a two-coat multi-finish skim to achieve a flat, smooth surface throughout.

Before any plaster was mixed, the team carried out a thorough preparation stage. The bare brick and blockwork walls were brushed down to remove loose debris, dust, and any remaining flakes of old plaster. A PVA bonding solution was diluted and applied across all wall surfaces to stabilise the porous substrate and improve adhesion of the bonding coat. The ceiling plasterboard joints were checked and confirmed to be secure, with screws countersunk correctly. Orange jointing tape had already been applied to the board joints, and these were checked for flatness. The floor throughout the room was fully sheeted with heavy-duty dust sheets to protect against plaster splatter during the application process.

With preparation complete, the plastering process began on the walls. A base coat of bonding plaster (Thistle BondingCoat) was applied across all bare brick and block surfaces using a hawk and trowel. The bonding was built up to an even depth — typically 8–11mm — and ruled off flat using a feather-edge darby to establish a level plane across the wall. This base coat was left to firm up before the finish skim was applied. Once the bonding coat had reached the correct consistency, Thistle Multi-Finish was mixed and applied as a scratch coat across the walls. This first coat was scratched back lightly to provide a key before the second finishing coat was laid on and trowelled to a flat, smooth surface. The same two-coat multi-finish approach was used on the ceiling, working from one end of the room to the other to maintain a wet edge throughout. Around the window reveals, the plasterwork was carefully formed square against the frames using a small tool and straight edge, ensuring the junction was tight and clean. At the recessed downlighter positions in the ceiling, the skim was worked cleanly around each circular cutout. The second plasterer worked the walls whilst the lead plasterer managed the ceiling, allowing both surfaces to be worked simultaneously and polished back in sequence before the plaster began to set — a standard approach on larger single-room projects to maintain timing across the whole job.

The primary challenge on this project was the condition of the walls. Stripping back to bare brick and block creates a highly porous and uneven substrate that absorbs moisture rapidly. Applying finish plaster directly to this surface without adequate bonding would result in the plaster drying too fast, cracking, or delaminating over time. Additionally, working around the pre-installed recessed downlighters in the new ceiling required precision — the skim coat needed to be applied and polished right up to the edge of each cutout without smearing plaster into the light housing or leaving ragged edges around the perimeter of each hole.

To address the porous wall substrate, a liberal coat of diluted PVA was applied and allowed to become tacky before the bonding coat went on. This controlled the suction and gave the bonding plaster enough time to be worked flat before it set prematurely. For the ceiling downlighter positions, each cutout was masked lightly during the skim application and then cleaned back with a small pointing trowel once the plaster had firmed up. The two-plasterer approach — one on ceilings, one on walls — ensured that both surfaces could be managed within the correct working window, preventing the plaster from going off before final trowelling could be completed.

On completion, the ceiling presented a flat, smooth skim surface across all the new plasterboard panels, with the board joints fully concealed beneath the two-coat finish. Each recessed downlighter position was cleanly cut through the skim with no ragged edges. The walls throughout the room were transformed from exposed, patchy brickwork to consistently flat plastered surfaces ready for painting. The window reveals were formed square and tight against the existing frames. The entire room was left clean and ready for the decorator, with a uniform grey-white plaster surface across both ceiling and all wall planes.

The homeowner had a fully plastered room — ceiling and all walls — completed in two days, ready for first-fix electricians to install the downlighters and for decorators to begin painting. The stripped-back room that had sat unusable during the renovation was brought back into the project programme on schedule. Having both the ceiling overboarding skim and the full wall re-skim handled by the same team in a single visit simplified the renovation timeline and avoided the need to coordinate multiple trades for what is fundamentally one continuous plastering package.

Plastering directly onto bare brick and block is one of the more technically demanding tasks in residential plastering. Without the correct PVA preparation and a proper bonding coat, finish plaster applied to raw masonry will dry unevenly, crack along the wall face, or pull away from the substrate within months. Getting the bonding coat level before skimming is also critical — if the base coat is uneven, no amount of finish work will produce a flat wall. On a room of this size with simultaneous ceiling and wall work, managing the setting time across multiple surfaces requires experience and coordination that only comes from years of working on period London properties.