The walls had become so grubby over the last few years so I had to paint those too. I also fixed some problem areas on the walls with the same filler which is a pale grey colour.
Btw, if blobs of plaster land on the carpet/upholstery, just leave them to dry and they just flick off the next day!
It takes off a lot of plaster but it was as you can imagine, a real marathon and took me about a week of 4 hours per day. I did this during the holidays when the children were with their dad. It was a heat wave, I looked like a sweaty dough ball. Use a dust mask!
What I love about this sander is that it catches about 80% of the dust, you just tap it out into a tray every few minutes. This is all the dust I caught instead of it clogging up my hoover.
Once I was happy enough with the finish (about to pass out from exhaustion), I painted it with a good quality matt white emulsion paint. The Toupret skimming plaster/filler does not require mist coating first so that saves a lot of time and energy.
I was very impressed that it only needed one coat of paint, I used
Dulux Trade Matt which is always reliable in my experience.
In the end, I am super happy!
It may not be perfect compared to a professional job of course, but it looks ok to me and I saved a lot of money!
It is so relaxing to have a smooth ceiling and it changed the light and the feel of the room too. I now lay on the sofa and gaze up at all my hard work.
Since I have moved in a few years ago, I have worked my butt off trying rid this property of textures from the 1980s, woodchip wallpaper and Artex everywhere!
It is starting to look more like the 1900s
I took lots of photos in different lights and angles.
(Before)
The ceilings don't bother me as much in the other rooms, probably because they are smaller. I might tackle one room per year, once I recover. We'll see!
(BTW I have linked some of the products I used to Amazon in the hopes that if you decided to buy it, I will apparently receive some income. I've never done it before so I don't know how it works properly yet but I'm just letting you know!)