Another simple job today, turned into an absolute nightmare thanks to the utterly rubbish standard of house building in the UK... Patch of blown plaster on my garage ceiling caused by a water leak from the bathroom above. Plasterboard not in good condition so I've cut a section out to replace, but noticed that the skim coat is very easily dropping off the surrounding area. The ****ing builders have stuck the plasterboard up the wrong way round and skimmed the back of it! How on earth do I solve this one?!
You can skim both sides of a plasterboard, there’s no right or wrong way, just the suction is different on each side. Take off the loose, dilute PVA the edges and area where it’s fallen off, then skim over it with easifill and let it go off, rub it down then add another layer if necessary. Not all new builds are like it.
Ok, I wasn't aware you could skim both sides! I was worried about the PVA getting the bare edges of the skim damp and causing more of it to pull away
Of course you can plaster both sides, you can also tape and joint it you’d just be better off priming it first to ensure adhesion. For years I believe plasterboard was sold as dual faced i.e. skim plaster the brown side, decorate/fill and paint the white side, perhaps some older tradesmen remember?
Nice pic. There are old threads on this very site debating which side is which, and apparently the dark side like in the picture above was used for plastering for years, and the white side for decoration. https://community.screwfix.com/threads/plasterboard-which-side.7564/
I believe there was a time when there were different sides for different applications, but white paper side is the one for plastering now. I had to reskim a wall for someone once where the skim was delaminating and you can guess the rest. PVA will kill the suction on the 'wrong side' to enable it to be skimmed though.
I'll take the advice! It's appreciated! Just seems odd that they'd do it (as in this case the skim is clearly not sticking very well!)