old ceiling - overboard, skim, replace or false ceiling?

[Lower]

I'd just board over the original lath and plaster and then skim.

That's what we've done in all the rooms in our house over a period of 5 years and i'm about to do the last bathroom next week.

Not one has cracked again and the ceilings are far more secure than before.

Why bother taking down the old one when the plaster board holds up the original and gives a nice, flat, solid surface to skim?

 

[masona]

1. simply put up plasterboard directly onto the ceiling.

Finding the joists can be difficult

2. pull the lathe and plaster down and put up plasterboard. Get it skimmed.

I did my hall last year and never again!!

3. fit a false ceiling a few inches lower down and get it skimmed.

I'm doing my lounge ceiling and I put 3" x 1" batten across the opposite directing of the ceiling joists, you can use 2" x 1" but less play with plasterboards.

The 2nd photo if you look carefully on the edge of the plasterboard I left the batten off and it's held by the middle 2 battens then slide a batten over the edge of the plasterboards, that way you get the batten positioning spot on. Also a chalk line will help for the positioning of the ceiling joists, you can just about see the blue line.

 

[Lower]

Finding the joists is dead easy. You can hack holes as large as you like to find out where the joists are as you're going to cover them up with plasterboard!

 

[Richard C]

Finding the joists is dead easy. You can hack holes as large as you like to find out where the joists are as you're going to cover them up with plasterboard!

To find the joists just tap the ceiling sharply with a screw driver; the note changes when you’ve found the joist & you can even predict the centre pretty accurately with a bit of practice. Once you’ve found 2 joists, the others will all be at the same pitch, easy!

 

[Lower]

That too!

 

[AlF2008]

Thanks for the replies folks. I've no problem finding the beams as I have access to above and am quite handy with knocking and using sound from the other side.

One concern I have is that we were planning on having downlighters put in and I was concerned that the additional depth if just just overboarded would create a problem.

I've not yet had a good look at any downlighters but I presume they must have a fixing which would need to be proud of the ceiling to hold it in place?

 

[Lower]

Down lighters have special concealed spring fixings that clip the downlighters in place when you push them through the holes in the ceiling. The have a big design tolerance for the thickness of the ceiling.

The extra thickness of the plasterboard on top of the lathe and plaster hasn't caused me any problems with fitting down lighters in the two rooms that i've fitted them in.

 

[AlF2008]

thats fantastic. Thanks for the reply. Am hoping to do the replacing/overboarding this weekend (still haven't decided which!)