Plastering around ceiling spots

Hi Paul,

I'm about to skim over an painted artex ceiling. I vaguely remember from a plastering course two years ago that I'll need to scrape the bumps down, and apply PVA.

I've a couple of questions:

1: How to deal with the spot lights that have been installed. They are hanging so I can pull them down out the way, but do I need to treat the edges of the holes in any way? Do I need to use some kind of bead or use scrim?

2: Small hole from old hanging light. Should screwing in a bit of plaster board and taping it over be enough for just skimming?

Many Thanks!
Paul.

Answer
Hi Paul,

Firstly apologies for the delay in answering, I really have only just seen this and guess I maybe too late now but just in case:

You don't need to do anything with the edges - just plaster the underside. The collar of the light fittings will provide a reasonable border.

To patch up the old - yes if you can fix plasterboard in that's good. If not you can stick a slightly longer piece of plasterboard to the top surface of the old plasterboard (where you can apply some glue) and pull down to fix (put a hole in the plasterboard so you can pull it down with your finger), and then apply plaster as need be to the resulting recess.

Either method - Two or three layers of scrim over any patch like this will make it very strong.

Paul