Blown plaster on top of sandy "mortar" how to fix?

[Andy.T]

Hi there,

My detached, 3 bed house was built in 1970 and we are looking to totally modernise it a room at a time. The first room we are set to tackle is my sons bedroom which has large areas of badly blown plaster particularly on one internal wall.

We have a plasterer booked in to skim the walls and ceiling in a couple of weeks time but last night I decided to open up the worst section of blown plaster to see how big it was and what things were like underneath.

Large areas of plaster just fell away with very little persuasion but what bothered me was the "mortar" (that's probably not the right word) underneath. It was incredibly sandy and just fell away when I scratched it with my thumb.

It's an internal wall on the second floor so I don't think it's a damp problem.

My question is, how far back will it need to be stripped before it is safe to replaster, and would it be safest to do the whole room in this way? The worst bit is confined to one wall but there are smaller bits of plaster that sound live dotted around the room and I want to make sure they are all found and fixed.

Is it more of a brickie job than a plasterer's stripping back the underlying mortar?

I can post a pic if that helps?

Cheers,

Andy.T

 

[Micilin]

For peace of mind,

If it will come off easily you should take it off. You don't need to pay a plasterer to do this, you can do it yourself or pay a young fella or labourer to do it , but you should get whoever is doing the plastering to advise on if it needs it asnd how much.

If you need to get a hammer and bolster to it , it probably won't ever fall off - but really without seeing it it's hard to tell.

Wall preperation is as imprortant as the actual plastering, as you obviously know.

 

[Andy.T]

Thanks for that, we actually got our plasterer out to check it over and he says it's nothing to be worried about and that he'll find the dodgy bits and scrape them back before replastering.

Fingers crossed we should be all set. I guess the proof of the pudding...

 

[JohnD]

I see you live in Sussex. This sandy render, as a backing coat, with a hard plaster skim, seems to be the way they like doing it round here.

I suspect it would be lime in the older houses.