Board over existing ceiling or rip down and start fresh?

[H0ckeynut]

Got a Victorian terrace which I'm renovating (not living in yet). The kitchen at the back needs new kitchen, with that I'm planning downlights into the ceiling (which is happening with a full rewire of the house anyway).

I've had a look through the ceiling and there appears to be 2 layers of plasterboard already, the finish at the moment is artex (which I hate anyway).

So what I'd like to know is....
Would it be best to plasterboard over it with wooden frame to give room to mount the lights, or to get the old ceiling down and then board fresh? The ceiling doesn't appear to be totally level either, but I'm guessing that will be just as annoying at joist level as it is at plasterboard level?

So, these are my thoughts so far. If I bring down the whole ceiling, I will not lose further more height. The only counter side to it I can see and issue where the new ceiling would be marginally higher than the old double layer one, thus the walls would all need work at the top of them?

Also, how would one go about taping into the walls?

It's not like I'm living there, so creating a bit of mess etc isn't such a big deal as it would be if I had a kitchen already in there.

As an extra note, I will be building a stud wall near the end of the kitchen to make into a utility room, so presumably that would also be better nailed to joists/noggins anyway, rather than through 2 layers of old plasterboard first?

Any experienced helpful advice on this would be much appreciated.

Thanks,
David

 

[Richard C]

If the ceiling was in good condition there is nothing to prevent over skimming the Artex, done properly you will never know the difference. If it’s uneven & you want to sort that out then I would probably go for pulling it down, levelling the joists where necessary, put up new boards & skim. Repairing what you’ve got will be a lot less work than building a new stud drop ceiling although you can create a very attractive feature like this by forming the ceiling at 2 levels.

Repairing the top part of the walls should not be a major issue, it depends what’s there when you take the boards down but I would almost certainly re-skim all the walls anyway. If by taping into the walls you mean between the new ceiling & the walls; taping is recommended (& I’ll probably get slagged again for saying it) but, IME, it’s not really essential if you board it tight. In fact I’ve had problems with renovations on older properties where I’ve taped & re-skimmed the ceiling/walls & after a couple of months it’s moved, cracked & pulled the tape away with large chunks of the new skim attached. Perhaps I've ebeen unlucky but I’d much rather have had to repair a few cracks than all the repair work I had to do on the skim.

With the new stud wall, as long as the head plate is fixed into the joists or noggins, it won’t make any real difference to its strength; I always use 4” x 2” & screws to form the studwork rather than nails.

If your doing major renovation work on the kitchen forming a new utility room, it’s a Building Regulation requirement to have forced ventilation; 30 litres/sec for both if you use a cooker hood but a fan other than over the cooker in the kitchen requires 60 litres/sec. I notice your having a re-wire but it’s very important that the spark is suitably qualified to do the work & that you get the necessary test & compliance certification at the end; if you can’t produce this when you come to sell it will cause you problems.