Plaster board over lathe and plaster ceiling

[DJM]

A friend of SWMBO is having to move back into the ex matimonial home after a year of it remaining empty. Long story and as I am led to believe an acrimonious divorce and attempted sale of house, so house left empty for a year and to make matters worse a burst pipe caused more damage.

As she is very skint, SWMBO offered me to have a basic look to determine what needs to be done (either by me or by the professional) to make it habitable again.

Having had a look there are a couple of jobs on the heating system which will need doing and the boys in teh heating forum have helped here.

Most are not too much of a problem and if she had more time I might do them for her, but she's in a very difficult position. House isn't selling for enough to cover the equity loss and she is about to be forced out of her rented accomodation so has no-where else to go. If the bill gets too large then she may lose the house as well.

Therefore trying to keep it to the minimum safe level. I'll do what I can, but the stuff I can't or that which needs to be done in a time frame I cant accomodate due to work and our family has to cheap and cheerful. Frankly now I've seen the state of the place I wish we could find another way, for her and the kids, but we dont have the space for them with our kids and she has to live somewhere.

The Ceiling which took brunt of pipe burst needs work, but not sure what we can get away with. Its a lathe and plaster ceiling now with cracks in see pics

Looking from above all the lathes are intact and the plaster is still overlapping then so doesnt look like its going to fall off, but I suspect it ought to be repaired or replaced. Anybody suggest it could be left?
If not, can we simply get some plasterboard and put it over the current ceiling and screw through to the joists (perhaps with a few more screws than normal, then get a platerer to scim it?

Any other suggestions

 

[roy c]

After having a good look at the "pics" it looks like it was papered (Looks like lining paper) along time ago to cover over the many cracks that ceiling has. There may be some one who would steam the existing paper off and tape and and fill the cracks and then skim over it ,or get it to a standard where it could be lined. But I personally wouldn't do either, I would either drop the ceiling, or cross batten it, or if the ceiling was flat enough screw boards over it. I dont think there is a quick fix, but if she is moving back in, there may be some one who could patch and paint it till she gets back on her feet as long as it is safe and no chance of anything coming down. Good luck . One of the other lads on here may have some other ideas of what to do...

 

[Richard C]

It doesn’t look to be in much of a fit state to make remedial work particularly easy or practical in the short term. I always prefer to do things properly & would normally say either repair or rip it all down & start again but if you say time & budget is tight + taking it down would cause one hell of a mess, the simplest/cheapest way would be to overboard it & re-skim; that’s assuming it’s not a listed building

 

[DJM]

House is a simple semi-detached, in a normal street of mixed heritage so nothing to list and certainly not a conservation area lol.

Money is desperate for her which is why I am trying to do as much as I can to make it habitable for her and her kids. A bit of patch plastering I can manage, but not a whole ceiling.

It's possible that at some time in the distant past the ceiling was lined to cover some cracks, but the major damage I am led to believ was done by the leak which was directly above the cracks to the left of the light fitting.

I'd rather not batten the ceiling as it will reduce the height too much. I think the ceiling is just about OK to directly fit platerboard to.

I wonder if in teh very first instance to hmake safe and habitable i could just put the plater boads up and she could wait to get it skimmed when she can affor it?

 

[Richard C]

I wonder if in teh very first instance to hmake safe and habitable i could just put the plater boads up and she could wait to get it skimmed when she can affor it?

Nothing wrong with that; you can even emulsion it (but please only use matt) & it wont make any difference to whoever comes along after to skim it.

 

[DJM]

I wonder if in teh very first instance to hmake safe and habitable i could just put the plater boads up and she could wait to get it skimmed when she can affor it?

Nothing wrong with that; you can even emulsion it (but please only use matt) & it wont make any difference to whoever comes along after to skim it.

I must learn to type properly looking at that quote lol. Thanks for that, that would help her a lot in the first couple of months as the boiler issues have to be done as well.