DIY - Dining Room

What can i say... This room is currently in a real mess, actually there is a type of order going on here, its called caotic!!... LOL..

the majority of the plaster which has been taken off is on the chimney stack, basically, the old cement has perished due to the heat from the original fire place. The old plaster was hacked off back to the original brickwork, the angle beads (often refered to as float beads, these are the wider type, the thin type are known as skim beads, you can also get the thin ones in a solid galvanized steel rather then the expanding metal type and these are for corners on stud type walls), are stuck on with carlite bonding, you can use a motar mix, but its easy to knock the bead off when floating it out if you intend to float the wall the same day.

The other reason for removing the plaster back to brick work is mainly due to the cock-up from the previous plasterer, i'm not sure whether it was the previous owner or not, but judging by the handy work i have found in this house, it wouldn't suprise me. For instance, they had put a new ballistrade in upstairs on the landing, and instead of glueing in the spindles, the dick head had nailed through the hand rail and into the top of the spindles... beggers beleif... so as you walked down the landing, running your hand along the rail you could feel the nails sticking up... I couldn't salvage anything from that cock-up, and had to replace the lot.

The trouble with removing old plaster is the fact that you cannot plaster upto loose plaster, so you have to continue to remove the old stuff until you reach solid plaster, unfortunatley sometimes you can end up with just a little bit of original plaster left on the wall.. at this point its usually more economical to remove the rest and just start from scratch.

I really did not want top drop the ceiling, as the mess makes your house un-livable, so its easier and cleaner to over board the entire cieling. To do this I first made 2 channels along the ceiling to expose the joists above, stuck a nail in the center of each one then tied a peice of string between them and mark the ceiling, this gave me a line i could measure to for cutting the plaster boards. One thing to remember is don't nail through the boards where the channel is!!

Again, all the wood work is being replaced in this room, the old gas fire has been removed and the hole bricked up. The window is staying but all the old wood work around it will be going, I'm going to build it up then plaster it.

I'll o some more pictures once i have some plaster on the walls and the ceiling.