That said, the sections of the closet were so small, and I was on such a time crunch that we decided not to three coat it in this case (plaster would have been three days, plus a week or two cure time before paint. First I stripped the wallpaper, I use a couple of different scrapers and fabric softener and hot water in a spray bottle (about a 1:6 ratio). The fabric softener has done more to remove the abandoned house smell than any other thing I've done. I spray and just keep everything damp as it penetrates - in rooms like this with painted paper, scoring it is definitely helpful. After that's clean and dry I wash off the residue with TSP, hot water, and a green scrubby. Strip wallpaper before repairing plaster, I can guarantee you'll need to repair more than it looks like at first glance.
painted wallpaper |
After everything's dry I clean out all the rotted plaster from the holes with a 5 in 1. I go down to the lathe (and clear out the plaster from between them) in any section that's not just delamination of the finish coat. Once the worst of the crumbles has been conquered I dab on plasterweld to the lath and inside edges of the plaster, and wait for that to dry (the waiting is the main theme of any plaster repair). For this repair I didn't have any holes larger than 5"x5" (and the square ceiling batch was nearly flush with 1/4 inch drywall), so I went with durabond. Holes bigger than 3"x3" get wire lathe screwed into them (you can also use blue board or drywall in larger holes, which I did in the ceiling patch), if there's not enough support for the wire lathe just add more wood lathe. I normally don't patch with drywall, but in this case there was an enormous old raccoon nest in the eaves that was oozing through the lath, I need to crawl into the third floor knee wall space to clear it out, but in the meantime I didn't want my plaster keys bonding to that disgusting mess, and blue board only comes in 1/2 inch, not 1/4 inch.
holes are cleaned out |
first coats |
final coat drying |
picture is true to wall color, sage green |
color is true to the ambient light |
fog across the valley |
I greatly admire your plastering ability! That looks great now.
ReplyDeleteit's not great, but it seems like good enough blends in better with the old plaster walls anyway!
DeleteThe AFTER picture looks great! Can"t believe the difference! Good job!
ReplyDeleteThanks! It's amazing how much different the room feels . . .
DeleteHi nice reading your bblog
ReplyDelete