Straight cement Render?

I have put 2 coats of Blueboard acrylic render over a blueboarded area and intend to continue the same render over the rest of the house (eventually). Though pricey ($42.00 per bag!!) this seems forgiving to a novice, sticks well and evens out the lumps and bumps of the patching underneath.

However, it provides a reasonably coarse finish whereas we would prefer as smooth as possible - what would be the best skim coat to run over it to smooth over the comparitively rough, sandy finish and provide a good surface for paint?

Cheers, Ron

There are many renders available, you don't need to use the same blueboard render on the brickwork. If you want a really smooth base coat to paint then you could possibly use a really fine render over the brickwork render (the company I work for has this such product), the fine render is sponge finished and will take away the 'roughness' of the first coat.

Bags of brickwork render can range from $9 - $15 /bag and cover about 4-5sqm.

If you want to find out a little more on acrylic render, check out this pdf brochure.

If you want to continue the blueboard render ($$:oo: $$) over the brickwork, you can still use the fine render to smooth it out and paint over.