One of our recent jobs was to patch 3 damaged plasterboard walls in a shop fitout at Westfields Tuggerah. The walls previously had panelling glued to them. When the panelling was removed the glued areas ripped the paper from the face of the plasterboard.
Our first job was to rip off any loose paper that remained. If you go over the top of loose  or torn paper with plaster it will create a bubble under the surface that needs to be cut out later.
We then applied 2 coats of cornice cement to the damaged areas. We could have used any regular setting base coat for this.
The next step was to apply a top coat. Because such a large area of each board was damaged we decided to skim the entire area with top coat. We did this by applying a watered down topping compound with a paint roller. Applying topping compound in this way is a bit unconventional but it worked well in this case. We did it this way because it is quicker and easier than trowelling top coat over the entire area.
We then sanded the area with a electric sander attached to a vaccuum to reduce dust and touched up small sections that needed it by hand. You can see in the second video how using an electric sander with an industrial vacuum eliminates almost all of the dust that is generated when sanding.
A quicker and cheaper way of doing this job would have been to screw new plasterboard sheets to the front of the damaged ones and set the joints like normal. This wasn’t possible on this job due to the strict rules enforced by the shopping centre Westfields when preparing a store for a new tenant.
Repairing the damage like we did was time-consuming and added to the cost.
Our price for repairing these plasterboard walls was $2,500 plus GST. This included an allowance for working outside normal working hours.