I've just had some walls skimmed and now want to paint them.
For the first coat I'm using a 50/50 mix of emulsion and water, however some parts of the plaster seem to have a striped effect and this is proving difficult to cover.
What's the cause and what can I do?

confused, August 2009

Hello confused. If it helps, where the striped plaster is showing, add on more paint in this area to "level it out" and then use a thinner amount of emulsion first with water and allow to dry thoroughly. Plaster usually takes more than 24 hours to dry, depending on location, room temp and conditions of walls, ceilings. If your not having much fun painting apply PVA (Glue) to seal the plaster as this should have been done prior to painting and allow to dry. You can mix PVA in with paint and water and allow to dry thoroughly too. Then when paint is dry add on more paint to cover up "ugly lines" there should not have been any lines left so this tells me your plasterer didn't use the 5 -6 stages of plastering ;or unless where there is a join in the section, he should have made sure there was no lines showing. Good luck,

Anthony Tovey, September 2010

the plaster may not be dry .2 fin coats of paint and 2 neet coats .

kyle the decrater, September 2009

Maybe a little to much water which has in effect thinned out the emulsion finish and therefore the plaster is still visible. A coat needs to go down but if you are painting over the primary coat the finish will look good.

Shaun, September 2009