Dry lining rough plaster wall with plasterboard.

Hi All

My daughter has just bought a 125 year old terraced house. We've stripped all the existing wallpaper, and (unsurprisingly, given the state of the rest of the house) this has caused some of the skim underneath to disintegrate. We've been able to fill and hang lining paper on most of those surfaces in order to finish them to a decent standard, but the two chimney breasts downstairs are particularly bad. Those walls are too rough to get away with lining paper, even after filling holes, DIY skimming and a great deal of rubbing down, and after spending money on other projects we don't have enough spare cash to get them professionally skimmed. So I'm considering dry lining with plasterboard then hanging lining paper over that.

My question is about the best way to fix the plasterboard to the wall. I know there's a plasterboard foam adhesive that you can buy, but is it good enough to hold heavy sheets of board on a vertical surface without the addition of nails or screws?

Many thanks in advance

Why not use proper board adhesive... the powdered type you mix with water, this won't require mechanical fixing afterwards.
You could also buy taper edged boards, then tape, and skim the joint with.... wait for it.... Joint filler

If the walls is crumbly, slap on a bit of watered down pva first, will help with adhesion.

Thanks for that. I’ve been browsing other methods of fixing since posting the above and yes, an adhesive mix does sound better. The picture rail above the chimney breast will have to be repositioned because of the thickness of the board, but a minor issue.

More questions to come after the boards fall off the wall.

stone chimney breasts in older properties rarely if ever have a damp proof course. plasterboard adhesive will transport any moisture straight through the board.

bennymultifinish said:

stone chimney breasts in older properties rarely if ever have a damp proof course. plasterboard adhesive will transport any moisture straight through the board.

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The chimney breast appears to be brick rather than stone. But to avoid the potential for moisture transfer, I could presumably mount the board on half or 3/4 inch battens, with the screws driven through the plasterboard and batten into plugs in the wall?

By the time you've added up the cost of the plasterboard, the adhesive, the battens, the lining paper etc, sounds like you're better off paying £150-200 to get them skimmed.

I've roughly totted up the cost in my head. Boards would be about 30 quid ( though I've yet to measure properly) the adhesive is about 15, the battens and screws if we went that way would be perhaps 20 quid, and we already have plenty of lining paper. So not much more than fifty quid, I reckon. Having said that, the chap who fitted the bathroom put my daughter in touch with a plasterer who skimmed her entire bathroom, four walls and the ceiling, for just over 400 quid, and its not a small room. I guess it might be worth getting a quote from him.

batten and board is dry cheap and diyable.

Thanks, Benny. I spoke to my daughter about it, and the short term plan is to bring the chimney breast surfaces up to as good a standard as we can by filling and sanding, then hang lining paper and paint. Once everything else is done and if the surfaces still look unsightly, we'll strip the paper and get the same plasterer who did the bathroom to come in and skim. Its the only sensible long term solution and by far the neatest.