Sometimes old walls or ceilings need to be skim coated. Some people call this "floating". Sometimes it's just to cover stucco that's not wanted anymore. Sometimes it's to cover damage. Sometimes the original spackling was done so poorly, the only way to fix it is to skim over the entire wall.

 

Here are some before and after pictures from a house that had stucco in the living room. The customer asked if we could make it "smoother". We did a full skim coat on the entire ceiling. He was so happy with it he called us a week later to thank us.

This is the ceiling before. We also removed two beams that were for show. On the carpentry page you can see pictures of how we replaced that knotty tongue and groove from scratch.

Below is the same room after we skimmed the ceiling, and replaced the tongue and groove. The picture was taken with my cell phone, so it is grainy and not the best quality. It looks like it's brand new sheet rock. There are absolutely no speckles or shadow lines on it at all.

 

 

The next few pictures are from a customers house where we renovated their den. It was originally wallpapered. Then paneling put over the bottom half, and the top wallpapered over the first layer of wallpaper. When we removed the paneling, the wall underneath was badly damaged. The wall paper was also put up poorly, with raised seams, and some sheets were even overlapped, instead of butted against each other. While we were working there they also had someone else remove a radiator and replace it with baseboard and move some electric. This resulted in a huge sections of wall that needed the sheet rock to be replaced.

Here is what it looked liked after we took off the paneling from the bottom half. Notice the water damage under the window? The wallpaper is stained from the previous window leaking and running down behind the paneling.

Below shows the electric fixed, and the sheet rock. ready to be replaced. The wallpaper was oil primed to stop the water damage from bleeding through. The radiator was removed next.

We replaced the sheet rock., and skimmed the entire wall. Below is the finished wall.The outlets are just out of view to the left.

 

 

Here are the stairs leading out of the den. There was a thick edge of paint where the wall was painted twice, up to the edge of the paneling. One of the two layers of wall paper was also pealing off. The entire wall needed to be skim coated.

Below is the wall after we finished. With only my camera phone, you can't see the smooth quality of the finish.

 

 

Here is another job we skim coated a stucco ceiling in a kitchen.

Below is the same ceiling after we finished. The ceiling curved down under a stairway. Even the curve is smooth. Please remember the grainy appearance is from only being taken with a camera phone.