Artex and Covering Tutorial – Covering
This comes in many forms, plaster or polystyrene, and also in various sizes, for most houses 4 or 5 inch (or their metric equivalent 100mm and 127mm) is the preferred width. We think plaster coving looks better than polystyrene. Make sure you have enough lengths of coving to complete your job, remember you will “lose” a little when you cut your mitres.
The mitres are the corner cuts you need to make when hanging coving, and is also the point at which most amateurs go wrong.
The trick (until you master it), is get a some off cuts of coving and get some practice in. Hiring a proper mitre saw is a worthwhile expense.
Next score up the top of the wall and a little way out from the ceiling with an old Stanley, to help the coving bond to the surface, but be careful you don’t score out further than the coving will sit.
Be sure to check which is the wall edge of your coving, and which is the ceiling edge, this should be written by the manufacturer’ on the back of your length of coving, and cut your mitre. Once you have cut your mitre you should be ready to put up your first length. If you are trying to learn the art of artex and covering, or are looking for this service for your property, get in touch with our painters and decorators today.
| Mix up some coving adhesive in a bucket, according to manufacturers’ instructions and load up both edges of the coving with the cove adhesive, using a filling knife, (we recommend a 5″ dry lining tool). In consistency your coving adhesive should be fairly thick and you need to load up the entire length of the top and bottom edges of the coving (or wall and ceiling edges), with the coving adhesive, the coving adhesive should be applied evenly, about 20mm in height. You might need a bucket trowel to get the last of the adhesive out of the bucket. Now it is time to hang your length of coving, for longer lengths our painters and decorators recommend 2 people hanging it, have any step ladders or working platforms in place and your filling knife and caulking tool to hand, you may also need a hammer and a few nails, push your coving into the desired position at wall ceiling junction being sure to make sure the wall edge sits against the wall and you don’t have your coving upside down, you should use your fingers to push both edges of the coving tight against the wall and ceiling, along the entire length of the coving, if your coving won’t stay in place just tack a few nails underneath the bottom edge of the coving and through the top edge, you should just bang these nails in a little way so you can pull them out later when the adhesive is dry. |
Now you need to flatten the old Artex, (again if you are Artexing a flat ceiling you can skip this chapter and go down to coving, if you aren’t hanging coving you can go to the “Artexing” chapter) it is important to have a flat surface on which to apply your new texture. There are many things on the market you can use to do this, you can use whatever the manufacturers’ of your Artex/ Wondertex recommend, which is likely to be “smooth it” or the texturing compound itself, we think the best thing to use is multifinish plaster, for procedures and how to apply the plaster you should go to the plastering tutorials on this site.
Allow your skim (or whatever you used to flatten) to dry completely, when the skim is dry, you need to seal the plaster with 2 further coats of Artex sealer.
For more information about this service or anything else that our painters and decorators specialise in across Exeter and surrounding areas in Devon, get in touch today.
