Ceiling Replacement & Wall Re-Skim by a Plasterer in Westminster, London

This project took place in a large reception room within a period property in the Camden area, close to Westminster. The room features a distinctive curved bay window with an arched surround — a characteristic detail of Victorian or Edwardian architecture. Original wide floorboards, panel doors, and exposed brick walls confirmed this as a pre-1920s residential property. The room was being fully stripped back and refurbished, and the plastering works formed a central part of a wider renovation programme before redecoration.

The before image tells a clear story. The original ceiling had been completely stripped back to bare timber joists, with no plasterboard or lath remaining. The exposed joists showed dark staining consistent with age and possible historic damp ingress from above. One side wall had been taken back to bare brick, with all old plaster removed — exposing uneven masonry with open joints and varying surface levels. The opposite wall retained patches of old painted plaster in poor condition, with sections missing entirely. The curved bay wall also showed deteriorating render and flaking lime-based plaster. The room was stripped to its shell and required a full plastering package from the joists down.

The scope covered three distinct elements: full ceiling replacement, bare brick wall plastering, and re-skimming of the remaining wall surfaces. For the ceiling, new 12.5mm plasterboard sheets were to be fixed directly to the existing timber joists, taped and then skimmed with two coats of multi-finish plaster. The bare brick wall required a scratch coat of bonding plaster applied in sections, built up to achieve a flat, plumb surface before the finish skim was applied. The remaining walls with old painted plaster required the surface to be assessed for adhesion, keyed back, and primed with a diluted PVA wash before re-skimming. The curved bay wall and its arched surround required careful hand work to follow the radius accurately. All wall and ceiling surfaces were to be brought to a smooth, paint-ready standard consistent across the entire room.

Before any plaster was mixed, the joists were checked for level and any protruding fixings were punched back. The plasterboard sheets were cut to size and fixed to the joists using drywall screws at the correct centres, with boards staggered to avoid continuous cross-joints. All board joints were taped with fibreglass mesh tape before the skim was applied. On the bare brick wall, the surface was dampened down and a bonding coat was applied in two passes — the first to fill the deep joints and level the worst irregularities, the second to bring the wall to a consistent flat plane. The remaining walls were scraped, keyed with a devil float, and coated with a PVA and water mix to seal the porous substrate and reduce suction before skimming.

With the new plasterboard ceiling fixed and all joints taped, the ceiling received a first coat of multi-finish plaster, applied thinly and worked flat with a steel trowel. Once the first coat had firmed up sufficiently, a second finishing coat was applied and trowelled to a smooth, even surface. The ceiling was cross-trowelled to eliminate trowel lines and left to set. On the bare brick wall, once the bonding coat had dried fully — typically 24 hours minimum — a first coat of multi-finish was applied and ruled off with a darby to achieve a flat plane. A second coat followed and was trowelled to a smooth finish. The retained plaster walls were skimmed directly over the PVA-primed surface using the same two-coat multi-finish method. The arched bay surround required the plasterer to work freehand around the radius, building the skim coat up carefully to match the curve without flattening the original architectural profile. All surfaces were brought to a consistent smooth finish across the full room.

The main challenge on this project was the combination of the stripped-back bare brick wall alongside a completely open joist ceiling — both requiring very different plastering approaches within the same room and ideally within a tight programme. The bare brick presented uneven surface levels with deep open joints, meaning the bonding coat needed to be applied in two separate passes and allowed to cure between each before the finish skim could be started. Working across two very different substrates simultaneously — new plasterboard above and porous old brick on the walls — required careful management of suction, drying times and material quantities.

The ceiling was boarded and skimmed first, allowing it to set and dry while the brick wall bonding coats were being built up in stages. By sequencing the work carefully — boarding the ceiling on day one, applying the first bonding pass to the brick wall the same afternoon, returning the next morning to apply the second bonding pass, then skimming the ceiling and walls in a single run — the drying and setting times were used productively rather than waiting idle. The PVA wash on the remaining walls was applied the evening before the final skim day, ensuring it had fully tacked off overnight and was ready to receive the finish coat without delay.

The first image captures the room mid-skim, with the new plasterboard ceiling already coated in fresh multi-finish plaster — still wet and showing the characteristic warm ochre tone of setting plaster. The walls are similarly coated, with the newly plastered surfaces visible against the stripped-back areas still to be finished. The transformation from the stripped shell visible in the before image is dramatic. Where there were bare joists overhead and open brickwork on the walls, there is now a continuous, smooth plastered surface ready to receive paint once fully cured.

The client was undertaking a full renovation of this period property and needed the plastering completed on programme so that decorators could follow immediately behind. By sequencing the ceiling and wall work across two days and managing the drying stages efficiently, the room was handed back plastered and ready for painting within the agreed timeframe. The client confirmed the walls and ceiling were flat and consistent across the whole room, allowing the decorator to apply a mist coat directly without any additional filling or preparation work.

Plastering over bare brick requires understanding how different substrates absorb moisture from the plaster mix. Apply a finish coat too soon over unbonded brick and the plaster will dry out too fast, crack, and potentially delaminate. Similarly, fixing plasterboard to old timber joists that may not be perfectly level demands checking and packing before boarding begins — otherwise the finished ceiling will show waves and dips once decorated. Managing suction on mixed substrates — new plasterboard, old painted plaster, and raw brick — within the same room requires adjusting the plaster consistency and PVA dilution ratios for each surface individually.