Murrant4

Hi all, I live in a 'wimpey no-fines' house which is made from poured concrete walls, and a poured concrete downstairs floor.

I have ordered a kitchen and will be installing new floor first. The kitchen floor is pretty cold so I was wondering if I could install a layer of PIR type insulation before laying the new floor.

Questions are:

1. when peeling back current lino, there is a layer of black material (see picture) - is this a type of DPM or a latex type screed? How could I tell?

2. What happens if I do break the DPM barrier? Lay some DPM sheet and joint with waterproof tape?

3. kitchen is a galley style, so will I be able to dig out the walking area of the floor and leave the parts

Hi all,

We've had our living room skimmed by a plasterer (UK) and it looks great.

We are planning on now working on the hallway next. Hallway has paint on, but you can scrape this off and underneath it the walls seem in good condition (to me anyway) i.e. smooth! However, plasterer has said we'll still need to get these walls skimmed.

It's our first house and we don't have a lot of money for renovations, so my question is... Is the plasterer trying to generate more work or am I missing something?

Thanks!