Plaster skimming in Woolwich, Plumstead and Charlton. Board or old plaster taken flat, two coats of finish, dust contained — flats and houses alike.
What skimming involves in Woolwich depends entirely on which Woolwich you are in. A Royal Arsenal flat is plasterboard and a clean day's work; a Plumstead terrace is lime plaster on lath and a question about whether it is still holding. We price them differently because they are different jobs.
Across the Woolwich Common and Shooters Hill streets many walls have carried heavy vinyl paint for decades, and a sealed surface like that is hard for new plaster to grip. A bonding agent goes on first so the skim holds, rather than sitting on a slick coat and crazing as it dries.
New board wants the right primer and a tight two-coat finish. A Victorian wall wants sounding first and stabilising before anything else.
Internal corners worked rather than filled, external ones beaded. In a small flat those lines are most of what you see.
The test is not whether it looks smooth in daylight, it is whether a lamp along the wall shows the trowel. That is the standard.
Sheeted routes, contained dust and waste bagged out. In a block that is the difference between a job people tolerate and one they complain about.
Walls with years of vinyl paint or gloss are keyed and primed before the finish, so the skim bonds instead of blistering.
Floors covered edge to edge and furniture moved or wrapped, which matters most in a small flat where there is nowhere else to put it.
Send a photo or a quick video of the room on WhatsApp, or get a free fixed quote — no obligation, and we’ll tell you straight what it needs.
A room is usually a single day, sometimes two for a whole flat. The building often sets working hours and lift bookings, so tell us at quoting and we will give you a timescale that accounts for them rather than an optimistic one.
If it is still keyed to the lath, yes. We tap it through first. Where it sounds hollow the honest answer is that skimming will crack out within a couple of years, and we would rather tell you now.
Three to seven days depending on the room and the ventilation - flats often dry faster than the terraces. It goes a uniform pale pink when it is ready. Mist coat first, always.
Yes, and in a flat it is common. The new wall is taken into the corners and blended at the ceiling line so it does not look like a different room once it is painted.
Usually because it went onto something unstable, old paint, a dusty surface or an untaped joint, or because it was dried too fast with heaters. Preparing the surface and letting it cure naturally avoids nearly all of it.