Monday, May 17, 2010
More Plastering
This plaster has been on the wall about 45 minutes and is hard. It starts out light, then turns leathery as it stiffens up. During this period, it can be worked and smoothed out. 10 or 15 minutes later and dark patches appear that are hard. It turns completely dark for a day or two and then back to light as the water evaporates out. The wall on the right is the same plaster that has cured for over a week. Further on in the living rooms its just the grey base coat. I haven't started in there yet.
On the right is fresh plaster starting to kick off. On the left is the base coat. At this point, any imperfections in the plaster are permanent. You can alway skim coat with more plaster, but I'm not going for perfection.
Here is a wall that has cured overnight and you can see that it was plastered with two separate batches. Any new batch of plaster has to be worked into the prior batch before the old starts to set, otherwise the transition can become obvious. This transition will disappear when both batches are fully cured and then painted. The wood are sleepers to which the cabinets will be attached. They are also used to screed the plaster to that depth. They will be hidden by cabinets. In fact the lower cabinets will hide so much wall that I didn't put finish plaster behind them.
Once the plaster dries, everything evens out. I can see some trowel strokes around the window, but a camera flash shows everything.
Here's a look at a window sill. You might have to click on the picture to see enough detail. The sills are made from marble door thresholds. $8 each at Lowes and then cut to fit with a concrete blade on my circular saw. A tile saw would probably work better, but I don't have one on site right not and the ends of the marble get covered with plaster so a ragged cut won't show. These give the look I wanted and the price is right.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Paint and flooring
Quarter inch cork gets rolled out in preparation for the tigerwood flooring. Just the cork made a huge difference in the noise transmission between the bedrooms and the dining/living rooms below. We now have to yell really loud (WHERE'S THE TAPE MEASURE!!)
Here's the cork in the master bedroom. You'll have to just look at the paint colors as the floor goes in. This is a brushed suede look that has a slight hint of minerals that glisten. Doesn't show much in photographs. If you click twice on this picture (and some of the other masterbedroom pictures) you will see some white dots on the walls. Those are the tiny crystals reflecting the camera flash. Funky.
The paper over the cork isn't necessary as a vapor barrier, but the installers said that it made sliding the wood around so much easier that they wanted to use it.
The pieces of the puzzle get put together.
The stair landing got an inset of tigerwood. Tigerwood treads are $125 each. Red oak is $25 each. So the stairs are red oak and the tigerwood on the landing gets you ready for the upstairs, which is all tigerwood.
The hallway. The vent cover is from Ebay. Yes, that's a pushbutton light switch. On the other side of the door will be the ceiling speaker control. The hallway is a light tangerine and the bedroom is a pastel minty green. Much more Miami Vice than we expected. That's the solar tube light in the hallway. Once again, glad I put that in. Highly recommended.
Master bedroom with Ebay light fixture. Double click on the picture and you can see the cast iron architectural "stars" that are used to bolt the knee beams to the concrete walls. Just to the right of the light is one of the ceiling speakers.
Here's the gable end window in the master bedroom. The windows open flat against the walls and a little bumper on the knee beam keeps the window handles from actually contacting the plaster walls.
Here's the doghouse dormer window in the spare bedroom. Ultimately, built in cabinetry will keep the window from hitting the attic ceiling valley rafter.
