What to do with bowning plaster before tiling, which is not skimming

Remove all paper prime the browning skim over allow to dry Apply tile primmer to walls not PVA Allow to dry before tiling The reason you don't use PVA under tiles is that when PVA gets wet it becomes slightly live again, it doesn't completely return to it's liquid state but it becomes sticky. When you spread tile adhesive onto the wall, the water in the adhesive makes the PVA live and stops the adhesive from penetrating the substrate and providing a mechanical grip. Basically your tiles, grout and adhesive are being held to the wall by a thin layer of PVA.

Hi,cannot believe that the tiles did not fail being fixed on lining paper,you will have to reskim the walls I would not fix to browning as this is to soft and need a more solid substrate to fix to if you are going to use polyfilla it will be cheaper to use a finish plaster do not believe in PVA its not fit for purpose use SBR which is a far better primer,but as you say if your on a tight budget and you want to chance it just prime the browning with the SBR and just hope the tiles dont fail it cant be any worse than sticking to the paper but is not the done thing.it is not a case of skimming makes the tiling easier it is skimmed to give a harder surface as the weight of the tiles could fail on browning and SBR is far better than PVA rubbish which only puts a coating on the plaster.

pva solution is fine. you do need to seal the plaster even if you skim it it helps to seal it with pva. The benefit of skimming is that it will make the tiling easier.