Coving looks great and is relatively easy to fit as long as you have the right equipment and a certain amount of know-how. Coving can be bought fairly inexpensively from most DIY stores or even online. Coving has been used for hundreds of years and still remains very popular to this day, so if you fancy a change or are decorating a room for the first time why not try brightening things up with some coving?

The first thing that you are going to need to do when fitting your coving is to decide where the coving is going to go. Many people will already have a good idea about this. If you are doing one room then the answer is obvious ? where the walls meet the ceiling! However, you may only want to do one section of the room for a specific effect and you will need to carefully plan this out. If you are putting the coving in more than one room or even throughout an entire house, then you will need to plan this carefully. Have a think about what you intend to do before rushing ahead and gluing something where it shouldn't be.

Next you need to mark out exactly where the coving is going to go. You need to take a piece of the coving, align it with the wall and mark with a pencil exactly where it is going to go. It is wise to use a spirit level at this point to ensure that all the lines you make are even and straight. Too often coving installation goes tragically wrong due to lines being crooked. The simple way to avoid this is to take your time and not rush to stick the coving down before you have made sure that your positioning is right.

Once you have marked out where the coving is going to go, you will need to ensure that the surface you are attaching the coving to is as smooth as possible. You need to take your time removing any lumps of paint, any folded wallpaper or any uneven plaster surface. You will need to be patient with this because the smoother the surface, the easier the coving will stick. There are many tools that can help with this cleaning process but one of the most obvious is a wallpaper scraper.

Now you get to the actual gluing of the coving pieces to the walls. You will need to start in one corner. Once you have decided which one, take the two corner coving pieces that you have bought. Add adhesive to the back of one of the coving pieces. You will need to put adhesive on both the surface that is going to be in contact with the wall and the surface that is going to touch the ceiling. The best way to apply the adhesive is to use a serrated spreader. Ensure that you apply the adhesive as evenly and as smoothly as possible and that it covers the whole surface area. Then press the coving firmly to the wall.

The last thing that you need to do is quickly remove any adhesive that spills out from the sides of the fitted coving. To do this you simply need to use a damp cloth. Once you have done this you can fit the matching corner piece and then work your way around the room. And that's it ? how to fit coving in a step-by-step guide.