Ceiling down or cover it up?

[Loder]

Hello

I'm about to attack my kitchen which has been left untouched for a good few years. One of the major jobs is the badly artexed and cracked ceiling. The thing is that the ceiling is the original black plaster over wood strips and just looking at that stuff makes a mess. I've been told that the best thing to do is screw plaster board straight on top rather than rip the old stuff down. Has anyone got any pro's and con's about doing this.

Thanks in advance.

Andrew

 

[breezer]

i would have though screwing up new palsterboard then a skim coat would in the long run be easier. not to mention less mesy / dusty. it sounds like you have an origonal lathe and plaster ceiling

 

[masona]

The choice is yours,if you are going to go over it with plasterboard then you will have to mark out all the joists for screws and getting the plasterboard to join up on each joists and the problem with this is you don't know where the electric cables are if you missed the joists then BANG Personally I don't like doing it this way because I think it actually take longer.If it was me I would take the ceiling down ( I know it will be messy & dusty ) but it would also give you a chance to inspect the timber for woodworm etc which can be treated straight away as your property must be fairly old to still have plaster lath.

 

[marmaliser]

Just took the Lath and plaster artex coated ceiling down in our 1930's house'skitchen and it was a piece of cake. There is not as much dust as you think and it soon settles. The Artex holds it all together so it often comes off in big chunks ... Which was nice

I used a 24" wrecking bar (6/7 quid well spent) to pull the strips of wood from the joist and then a claw hammer to remove the 100's of tiny nails.

Having the ceiling down makes it nice and easy to put any new kitchen wiring in, or in my case 4 light switches,7 Dbl sockets,3 single skts,1 cooker, 2 sets of spots and a centre light

It also makes it very easy to spot and remedy the leaking shower waste above.

The new ceiling goes back up in minutes as you can see were everything is.

It really was quite simple (apart from the double switching of the lights )

Go on, go for it

 

[Loder]

Thanks everyone for the feedback!!