Hello All,

Just when I thought all my wow's had ended Fawlty Towers strikes again... Last night partner went out to Tesco's and slammed door on the way out and section of plaster fell off the wall in the hallway! Background is that we moved in about two months ago but just before hand there was a substantial water leak from burst pipes - only discovered this afterwards and previous owner seems to have done eveything he can to just 'cover it up' rather than actually sort things properly...

Further investigation on the wall has shown that water must have penetrated between the original wall surface and a skim which judging by the way the paint is coming off was also painted when wet!!

As you can see from pic have removed all the 'loose' sections of skim and am left with areas where the skim and to some extent the paint seem to be sound - or at least very very difficult to chip off ....

Just wondering what the best course of action is - am I going to have to keep chipping away to get rid of all of the skim layer?

In either case what's the best way - after a making sure its dry - for prep'ing the wall to be re-skimmed?
Also, at the very top there is some plastic meshing - should this be put on the whole wall?

Thanks guys!

The following advice assumes the leak has been fixed and the wall is completely dry...

PVA the entire wall, especially the bit where the plaster has fallen off. Let it dry and then fill in the section that has fallen off with a fairly wet Bonding Coat mix - from the pics, you wont need much at all.

Then, when its firmed up (after a couple of hours or so) skim the entire wall - a patch will stand out like a sore thumb no matter hoe much you sand it

One new wall, Robert's your Mum's brother

Cheers!

What about the emulsion that's on there ok to PVA over that too?

Emulsion is normally fine, so long as its not all flaking off - if it were silk paint I'd suggest WBA rather than PVA, but you can always add a handful of sand to your PVA to give a coarse key for the finish coat to adhere to

Did a flat with exactly that type of substrate on the walls so we used a textured surface remover from HSS because it is some kind of old paint/adhesive residue and we couldn't guarantee that it wouldn't repel the skim. You could use Wickes bonding agent as suggested. At £14, it would be the simplest solution that I would recommend.