Plastering & Rendering

Removed wallpaper on solid to reveal a plasterwork horror show... what next?

Anonymous user 03/03/2024 - 3.37 PM

Hello. We live in a Regency period townhouse which was badly and cheaply renovated in the early 1990s. Many of the walls were covered with lining paper. We absolutely hate the stuff and would like to restore the plasterwork underneath. So, in the full knowledge that the wallpaper was probably hiding a horror show underneath, we have now removed it all from every room. As expected, we have revealed a horror show of uneven filler and plaster 'repair. Some of the filler is very soft and not at all smooth. Some is coming away and has not adhered well to whatever was underneath. Basically the whole surface on almost every solid wall is a smorgasbord of filler and plaster of varying age, colour and quality, is as lumpy as an oil painting, and in many places is either soft and not quite set or very hard cracking/peeling away. We are not sure where to go from here. Should we try and sand everything down to get it even and smooth? Or should we be hacking everything off and more or less starting again from the brickwork underneath? To make things more difficult, on the corners of the chimney breasts there are old-fashioned wooden hard corners. What do we do about them? Cover them with more plaster and they are no longer flush. Or remove them and replace them? One edit based in the helpful answer below: we have cornicing spanning the wall and ceiling inner corner. Therefore a further skim coat may not be possible because it won’t sit right against the bottom of the cornicing. Any other suggestions?