It’s likely that you’ve heard people stating that they require their walls plastering. However, have you heard the less common term that they need skimming?
We’re going to bust the misconceptions about the distinction between these 2 terms.
Plastering
Contrary to popular belief, plastering is the term used to the entire trade. This indicates that skimming is really a technique that a plasterer makes use of, rather than plastering and skimming being completely separate terms.
Plasterers carry out lots of different kinds of plastering and have to be very well-informed in their trade. For instance, some materials require more coats of plaster than others, and there are great deals of various techniques associated with carrying out a perfect task.
There are different type of plasters that plasterers should know the best ways to use:
- Cement plaster: Made from cement, sand and water and typically utilised on walls where masonry work has been done
- Lime plaster: Made from lime and water
- Gypsum plaster: Made with water and calcium sulphate
Skimming
Skimming is the name offered to a plastering approach where a wall is plastered with a layer of thin coat.
It is typically used to an existing plaster to smooth the surface location. It’s an incredibly uphill battle and should not be tried by an amateur DIYer as the wall or ceiling may end up looking even worse than previously!
The white layer of lime which is utilized to rough cement is called a skim coat. The plasterer uses different approaches to make the surface location smooth, and it may depend on the tradesperson’s proficiency. Then the skim coat can be painted to make it look far more enticing.
So in general, skimming is a subset of plastering. They are both utilized to embellish structures and increase the sturdiness of a wall, however skimming is done to update an old structure whereas plastering is done to a new one.
Another difference in between skim and plaster is that plaster surface locations are constantly rough whereas a skimmed area is smooth.