Hi Guys,
First post so hope it's not too long.
Here's the situation. We have old lime plaster in a post ww2 ex council house - it is solid red brick with a pebble dash render on the outside. The plaster going up the stairs is blown in a few places so I've hacked away any blown plaster and started to patch with hardwall.
The plan was now to re-skim all with multifinish. I've done a tester on a small wall upstairs and after a coat of PVA the day before, and another before doing the skim seems to work well - no cracking and feels very solid, a week or two later and still looks and feels fine.
I've seen mixed answers about whether skimming over lime is a good idea - I've heard a lot about lime being able to "breathe" and that stopping damp. However, the walls have been papered with woodchip for years with about a million coats of paint over it (some of them look like they were gloss) - so I wouldn't have thought the wall could really breathe anyway. The woodchip and left over adhesive has now all been scraped of course.
Is going ahead with my plan of skimming over with multifinish a really bad idea? We can't really afford to get it re limed.
The other idea was to strip it all and dot and dab, but I don't really see how this would help as dot and dab skimmed with multi isn't going to breathe either.
Any answers are much appreciated.
First post so hope it's not too long.
Here's the situation. We have old lime plaster in a post ww2 ex council house - it is solid red brick with a pebble dash render on the outside. The plaster going up the stairs is blown in a few places so I've hacked away any blown plaster and started to patch with hardwall.
The plan was now to re-skim all with multifinish. I've done a tester on a small wall upstairs and after a coat of PVA the day before, and another before doing the skim seems to work well - no cracking and feels very solid, a week or two later and still looks and feels fine.
I've seen mixed answers about whether skimming over lime is a good idea - I've heard a lot about lime being able to "breathe" and that stopping damp. However, the walls have been papered with woodchip for years with about a million coats of paint over it (some of them look like they were gloss) - so I wouldn't have thought the wall could really breathe anyway. The woodchip and left over adhesive has now all been scraped of course.
Is going ahead with my plan of skimming over with multifinish a really bad idea? We can't really afford to get it re limed.
The other idea was to strip it all and dot and dab, but I don't really see how this would help as dot and dab skimmed with multi isn't going to breathe either.
Any answers are much appreciated.