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.
# posted by gnome-honey @ 4:36 PM 
