Plasterboarding & Dry Lining in Exeter & Devon

Boarded and skimmed by the same hands

Boarding and skimming are one job. Split them between two firms and you can end up with a wall that's never quite flat.

A skim is only as good as the boards underneath it. Screws in the wrong places, joints that don't land on anything, sheets hung out of line, and the plasterer is fighting the wall before the first coat goes on. Then when it cracks a year later the boarder blames the skimmer and the skimmer blames the boarder. We do both, so that argument never gets started.

Most modern walls and ceilings are dry lined. Twelve and a half mil board on studs or dabbed straight to the masonry, joints taped, then a skim over the top and it's ready for paint. New builds, extensions, loft and garage conversions, or one room where the old wall is past saving. On a cold solid wall we can hang insulated board instead and take the chill off the room while we're at it.

Dot and dab, battens, or stud?

Three ways to get a board on a wall, and people get sold the wrong one all the time.

Dot and dab is board stuck straight to the masonry with dabs of adhesive. Quick, and right for most sound brick and block walls. Two things worth knowing though. It needs a dry wall behind it. Dab over damp and you've sealed the problem in, and it will come back through eventually. And because the board sits on dabs with voids in between, heavy things like TVs and radiators need fixings that go through into the wall behind, not just into the board. Tell us what's going where before we board and we can put solid backing in the right places.

Battens are timber fixed to the wall first, with the board screwed to them. More work than dab. But you get a gap behind for cables, and a screwed fixing you can trust on walls too rough or too iffy for adhesive.

Stud is a new frame altogether, timber or metal, for building a wall where there wasn't one. Splitting a bedroom, boxing in a stairwell, framing out an en-suite.

Which one your job needs depends on the wall you've got, not on which is cheapest to sell you. Send photos over and we'll tell you which we'd use and why.

Old ceiling: over the top, or down?

Two routes with a tired ceiling. Overboard it, new boards screwed straight through the old ceiling into the joists, then skimmed. No demolition, no skip full of lath and plaster, done in a fraction of the time. Or pull it down and start again, which is messier and dearer, but sometimes the only right answer if the old ceiling has sagged badly or the joists need looking at. We do both, and we'll tell you which yours needs when we see it. There's more on this on our ceiling repairs page.