Easy fill vs replastering

Got a couple of quotes for stripping woodchip and making good any resulting damage to plaster (which I gather is likely).

One chap says he’ll fill with easy fill, cheap quote.

Other chap says he’ll “plaster complete” – guess we should check whether he means full replaster by that. Pricey quote.

Is the end result going to look the same in either case?

A mate done a room for me once, although not woodchip it was stripped wallpaper. He done what he called a ‘velvet coat’ which was basically fill the bits that needed filling, let dry and sand then apply a thinned down filler coat over whole wall, finish by a light sanding. I just painted on top of this, looked great and is still fine 15 years later (although it’s had a couple recoats of paint in that time).

This was all on top of plasterboard though, not plaster so don’t know if that would make a difference.

are you stripping the woodchip or are they?

if its you, i’d just burn the house down now. hateful job.

I took off two layers of old lining paper and had walls in a horrible state. Gave walls a quick sand then used a filler similar to easi-fill to bring up the lower spots. Inexperience with it meant I did a couple of goes sanding then refilling bits but ended up with a really nice finish for paint.

Here’s an example of doing it the filler way:

If I knew I was re plastering anyway and therefore didn’t have to be careful I’d have thought the plastering might actually be cheaper! It does depend on the wallpaper though, some walls in our house took no effort to strip 90% off with just a scraper and the rest with a steamer. Others took weeks of picking off postage stamp sized bits of vinyl.

You can get the filler stuff from b&q (its actually half price at the moment) which I think you can skim straight over the textured wallpaper as long as its sound. There’s a couple of walls in our house that if I was doing again I’d use that as they’re not perfect but not bad enough to justify re-plastering.

skim over the top?

edit – yeah, like wot they said

joint taping compound can be sanded with a big sponge scourer which keeps the dust down if you are doing it.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/MARSHALLTOWN-DWS467-3-Drywall-Sanding-Sponge/dp/B000BQU1ES

Easyfill all the time, helps if you have an orbital sander. Use a good plasterers float and put several coats on if required, no need for it to dry between coats.

You can skim over the top if you want.

We had acres of artex and welded on woodchip and just skimmed over the lot.  Looked perfect.

Having just plastered my entire kitchen and then easyfilled all the dings made when lugging units and worktops about, I’d say if the easyfill is done right you’ll never know.

You cant skim on top, don’t think any good plasterer would do it anyway if you asked.  Score it all with a knife, steam then skim.

For future reference our builder recommended using lining paper. Cost fell in between easy fill and replaster (towards the lower end) and it looks fine.

If you’re looking at what a wall might look like after you strip woodchip, bear in mind that the reason for using woodchip in the first place is often the state of the plaster.