Full House Re-Skim with Media Wall Plastering by a Plasterer in Lambeth, SW8

This project took place at a Victorian terraced house in Lambeth, SW8, undergoing a complete internal renovation. The property had been stripped back to allow for a full re-board and re-skim throughout, with the living room being one of the larger and more complex rooms on the ground floor. The room featured a newly constructed media wall with multiple recessed niches — a centrepiece detail that required precise plasterboard framing and careful skim work to deliver clean, straight edges around each opening.

At the time our team arrived, the living room walls had already been stripped of their existing plaster and re-lined with new plasterboard. The freshly fixed boards showed visible pink jointing tape running across all horizontal and vertical seams, and plasterboard screws had been countersunk ready for skimming. The media wall — built from a timber and metal stud frame — contained three recessed openings of varying sizes, with the TV recess protected by blue plastic sheeting and tape. The ceiling had already been skimmed to a flat finish prior to the wall phase commencing. The floor was fully protected with dust sheets across the entire room.

The scope of work on this room covered the full skim of all newly plasterboarded walls, including the bespoke media wall with its three recessed niches. Each section of plasterboard had been fixed and taped in preparation, and our team was responsible for applying a two-coat multi-finish skim across every surface. The media wall presented additional complexity due to the internal reveals of each niche, which required individual skim application inside the recesses as well as on the surrounding face of the wall. The two recessed shelf units on either side of the central TV opening, and the wide horizontal low-level recess below, all needed to be skimmed internally to produce clean, paint-ready reveals. Ceiling work had been completed separately during an earlier phase. The overall room required careful sequencing to avoid overworking wet plaster in one area while finishing adjacent sections — a common challenge when two plasterers work simultaneously across a large wall.

Before any plaster was applied, the jointing tape across all plasterboard seams was checked to ensure it was firmly bedded. Screw heads were confirmed as sitting below the board surface to prevent any print-through on the finished skim. The recessed openings in the media wall were taped along their internal corners using paper tape bedded into a thin base coat to stabilise the angles before skimming. A PVA bonding solution was applied across all plasterboard surfaces to reduce suction and extend the open working time of the multi-finish. The floor remained fully sheeted throughout and blue masking tape was applied around the window reveal and skirting line.

With two plasterers working simultaneously, the room was split into manageable sections to allow each area to be finished before the plaster reached its initial set. Multi-finish plaster was mixed in large buckets using a drill and paddle mixer to a consistent, lump-free working consistency. The first coat — a scratch coat — was applied at approximately 2–3mm across all wall surfaces, pressed firmly into the plasterboard to displace any air pockets behind the tape. This was laid up and left to firm before the second finishing coat was applied and trowelled back tightly. Inside the media wall niches, plaster was applied to each internal face individually, with angle beads used on the external corners of the reveals to produce crisp, straight arrises. The plasterers worked from platforms and hop-up steps to reach the upper sections of the media wall and maintain a consistent wet edge across the full height of the plasterboard. The finishing coat was trowelled smooth using a water mist sprayer — visible in the foreground of the image — to keep the surface workable during final trowelling. Each wall was brought to a flat, smooth, paint-ready surface before the team moved to the next section.

The primary challenge on this project was achieving consistent, flat skim work across the face of the media wall while simultaneously finishing the internal reveals of three recessed niches. Each niche had its own set of internal angles — top, bottom, and two sides — which needed to be skimmed independently and squared off accurately. Any deviation in the internal reveals would show clearly once the niches were lit or fitted with shelving. Working two plasterers in the same room also required clear sequencing to avoid one wet area inadvertently affecting an adjacent section.

The team divided the room so that one plasterer focused exclusively on the face of the media wall and its external angles while the second plasterer worked the flanking walls. The internal niches were tackled last, once the surrounding wall face had been brought to its first coat. Angle beads were fixed to all external niche corners using dabs of bonding compound before skimming, giving a firm guide edge to work to. Each internal reveal was skimmed in sequence — back face first, then sides, then top and bottom — and checked with a small straight edge before the plaster set. This methodical approach produced clean, square reveals throughout.

The completed living room walls and media wall were brought to a flat, smooth finish ready for decoration. The three recessed niches in the media wall featured clean, square internal reveals with sharp external corners, made possible by the angle beads fixed prior to skimming. The ceiling — already complete before wall works began — sat flush against the wall skim, producing a neat ceiling line throughout. All surfaces were left paint-ready, with no visible joins, screw prints or tape lines transferring through to the finished coat.

The client — who was project managing a full renovation of their Lambeth terraced home — was able to hand the living room over to their decorator within two days of our team completing the skim. The media wall niches were used to house shelving and a wall-mounted TV, and the clean reveals meant no additional filler work was needed before painting. The room formed part of a wider re-skim across the full property, with our team returning to complete further rooms over subsequent days.

A full house re-skim involving a bespoke media wall is not straightforward work. The recessed niches require plaster to be applied inside confined spaces with consistent thickness and flat, true faces — errors here are visible once the niches are used and lit. Applying skim to freshly taped plasterboard also requires timing: too much suction pulls the plaster off before it can be trowelled, while under-prepared surfaces allow tape to lift through. Using PVA correctly, sequencing two plasterers without cross-contaminating wet sections, and working to angle beads on reveals are all decisions that come from direct site experience rather than general plastering knowledge.