Newbie Question

see fella, with all this friendly advice all you need to do is hold your breath and jump in feet first, apparantly your arm gets used to it after 30 years......
 
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B&Q jobby. Ragini, Tyzack, and Marshaltown, at dawn Lads.... :LOL:
 
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You hear all these trowel stories like Johny buying using a four pound wickes trowel.

I look at two trowels. The first one is a crap one, perhaps a rusty dirty, old college trowel or perhaps a cheap one.

Then I look a decent new,reasonable quality, clean trowel and it's not a difficult decision for me.
 
Yeah thanks guys I'm definitely going to go for it. The house is basically an empty shell, there's lots I need to do to it.

There's a couple of jobs I need to finish up which will take me into the middle of next week and I'll give the bits I got laying around some practice skimming during any down time in the run up. Then I'm just gunna go for it and if I bodge it up, well, I'll knock it off again and ask for advice on repairing damage plaster lol (or - oh no - sand it with 30000000000 grain paper and the fine scotchbrite)
 
OK guys is it as good to practice skimming on just a board or better on a frame fixed to a wall? I'm thinking the latter right? Well, I have quite a lot of timber suitable for making a frame and plasterboard is cheap as hell, so I can bolt a frame to a wall in a room to get my practice on.

Collins lays out how to make partition walls, well if I did that but instead of making a wall just laid out the framework on the wall and then gripfilled it to the wall or bolted who cares can fill the holes in after cuz i'll be able to plaster :D

What I don't get though is if your attempt is a botch. You need to skim again. Do you just skim over your old coat or do you knock it off (I have a very thin pry bar) or start from virgin again?

Dunno how many tries it will take to make it look like the business but it doesn't matter, plaster is cheap, timber isn't but I have it and I got time to spare to keep making the attempts.
 
the first time you plaster the boards you dont need any pva just scrim tape over the joints. when you plaster over the plaster again then you will need to pva the partition wall. good luck mate

remember it takes a long time to get a good finish so dont be to harsh on yourself should you struggle to begin with.

post some pics if you can
 
As nice a bloke as you are, I thought you could have choosen a better name than "mr bodge". It doens't seem to inspire much confidence.

Save your pennies and get a pro to do it.
 
As nice a bloke as you are, I thought you could have choosen a better name than "mr bodge". It doens't seem to inspire much confidence.

Save your pennies and get a pro to do it.

The name is a joke I'm a pedantic 1mm out drives me crazy kinda guy, also because my jobs will probably not be as good as a trades BUT

You missed the point. This whole project started cause a chancer plasterer bodged it and blew my budget. I'm doing it, Photo's will be forthcoming. I got a proper camera now to sell all my possessions on eBay so I can make this building the star it was meant to be.

I know you meant what you said with the best of intentions but I won't be wasting anymore pennies on a pro, want something done right, learn to do it yourself. And at the end of the day, if it's still a pigs ear you won't have to drag your mates/trades down to country court/dark alley and will only have oneself to blame.

I'm easily lead by all the other guys pep talk and I'm doing this myself. They seem like real nice chaps too who will help me with the tougher parts I can do this and thank you for your advice, then respectfully ignore it.
 
Yeah I got that five pound plastering DVD. Only watched it the once and it convinced me to pay somebody else to do me plastering.

I reckon with most trades, if you are pretty handy type, you can read the books and practice a bit and if you are lucky watch somebody else do it first. Then take your time on your first own real job and within a week you can have something that is passable.

Plastering doesn't look like that, far far steeper learning curve at the beginning to get something the mrs won't kick me out for, and to be quite honest i don't have the time to learn how to do it properly. So couldn't be bothered when got all sorts of other things I can do half right so paying a spread is the way forward for me.
 
Plastering doesn't look like that, far far steeper learning curve at the beginning to get something the mrs won't kick me out for, and to be quite honest i don't have the time to learn how to do it properly.

That's the important bit, they say time is money - I have more time than money.
 
Well in that case you should start practicing, always better to DIY if you think you are up to it, I think.

Though I also get the feeling that migrating from a single piece of practice plasterboard to a whole wall of the things requires another large leap in ability. Not quite like plumbing where if you can solder a single joint then doing ten of them isn't that much harder. Plenty of opportunity on a whole wall for the mrs to find another excuse to kick me out.

But I reckon you should go for it.
 
chapeau, you need a more forgiving misses !! I find it harder, or did at first, to do really small bits as i was over tempted to prematurly play with the plaster. doing a larger area meant that i wasn't kicking my heals and had a nice steady pace to do the job start to finish
 

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