Seven stages, and only one of them is scraping. Here is what happens in your home from the moment the first piece of furniture is covered until the last of the protection comes off, what really sets the timescale and which decisions we will ask you to make before we start. We work throughout the province of Málaga.
Not sure yet whether your gotelé is distemper or plastic? You can check in a minute with a sponge, and the method depends on it.
People picture this job as someone scraping a wall. The scraping is stage two of seven, and not even the longest.
Furniture moved to the middle and covered, the floor protected with cardboard or reinforced film, skirting boards and frames taped, and the door of the room sealed with plastic. This is done before the wall is touched, not once the dust is already flying. It is the stage that gets cut short when there is a rush, and the one that costs most afterwards.
This is where the method your wall needs comes in: wet scraping, machine sanding with dust extraction, or skimming over the top without removing anything. It is the part everyone pictures when they think of this job, and in reality it is a fraction of the total time.
With the wall bare, the real state of the surface comes to light: cracks, badly cured plaster patches, holes from wall plugs, open joints. This is the moment to decide, and it is worth looking at it together: there is a difference between a settlement crack that just needs sealing and one that has to be opened up in a V and stitched.
Before skimming, the wall has to be made solid: hollow patches are hacked off, cracks are opened up and filled, edges are made good. Filling over something that moves only means the crack reappears, traced in the paint, six months later.
One or two coats of skim compound applied by trowel, each one left to dry completely, with fine sanding in between. It is the longest stage and the one that decides the result: a wall that is well skimmed but badly sanded shows when the light hits it from the side, and that is exactly how everyone looks at their own living room.
One coat of sealing primer over the whole surface. You cannot see it, which is why it is the first thing to drop out of a cheap quote, but skim compound is extremely absorbent: without sealing, the wall drinks the first coat of colour and the finish ends up with shiny and matt patches.
Two coats of emulsion with drying time in between, the edges cut in again at ceilings, frames and skirting boards, the protection removed and everything cleaned. The final check is done with raking light, which shows up what light from the front lets pass.
It is what surprises people most about this job: a whole room can be scraped in a morning and still take days to hand over. What sets the calendar is the drying, and that is not up for negotiation.
All of those times stretch out in cold weather and high humidity, because everything dries by evaporation. That is why the same job takes more days in January than in June.
None of them has a right answer: they depend on how you live in your home. But it is worth having thought them through, because deciding them once the wall has been scraped costs money.
The whole home in one go works out cheaper per metre and is finished sooner, but it means living with the work in every room. In stages it is easier to live with and more expensive, because each visit has its own setting up and packing away.
If not everything is done, there is a join between the smooth part and the part that keeps its gotelé. Tucked into the edge of a frame or a corner, it does not show; halfway along a hallway, it sticks out a mile. It is worth choosing that line on the plan before starting, not once the wall has been scraped.
They are the slowest and messiest part, because the work is done overhead. They are also where gotelé shows most, because the ceiling catches the light head-on. Keeping the gotelé on the ceiling and skimming the walls is a perfectly valid option, but it needs looking at before you decide.
You do not need to have it chosen to start: up to the primer, everything is the same. But you do need it before the first coat, with a sample tried on the wall itself and looked at by day and by night, because a colour seen in a shop is not the same colour in your living room.
All three look just as good on handover day. All three show up months later, when there is no longer anyone to call.
After sanding, a very fine film of dust is left that you cannot see. If the filler or the primer goes on top without vacuuming and wiping down, it bonds to the dust, not to the wall. You find out months later, when a whole sheet comes away as you peel off something stuck to the wall.
It is the invisible line item, and that is why it is the first to vanish from a tight quote. It shows straight away: the wall soaks up the first coat unevenly and the colour comes out patchy, with the filled areas more matt than the rest.
Over coarse gotelé, one coat covers the relief but leaves long undulations that raking light picks out. With two coats applied in opposite directions, they disappear. It is the difference between a wall that looks smooth from a distance and a wall that really is smooth.
The timescale is not set by the scraping, it is set by the drying. Each coat of filler needs its time before it can be sanded, the primer needs a few hours before the first coat of colour, and there is another wait between the two coats of paint. That is why a home is not done in two days even though the scraping itself is quick, and why rushing it shows in the result. In the quote we give you the specific timescale for your case, stage by stage.
There is no need to empty the home. What you do need to do is clear the walls completely — pictures, shelves, curtains — and leave about a metre free to work in. Heavy furniture is grouped in the middle of the room and covered. What is worth taking out of the area being worked on is anything delicate: electronics, clothes, books.
Yes, but you have to allow for everything going more slowly. Filler and paint dry by evaporation, so in cold weather and high humidity the times stretch out, and ventilating — which is what speeds up drying — is exactly what you least feel like doing. Indoors it is perfectly feasible; what is not done in the depths of winter is facades.
Work stops and we look at where it is coming from. A stain from an old leak that has already been fixed is cleaned up, sealed and the job carries on. Active damp — a leak, rising damp, chronic condensation — has to be fixed at the source before skimming: filler on top lasts a few months and then it comes back through, and the whole job has to be done again.
Scraping off distemper gotelé is hard work but there is no mystery to it, and some people do it. Where it gets complicated is what comes next: skimming by trowel and sanding are what decide whether the wall ends up truly smooth, and there the difference between an amateur and someone who does it every day shows when the light hits it from the side. A sensible middle way is to do the scraping yourself and leave the skimming and painting to a professional.
With two photos and the approximate square metres, we can tell which method your wall needs, how many stages it involves and what can overlap. We reply in writing within 24 working hours, with the timescale and the price already fixed.