Little Done & A Momentous Event

Well, I didn’t quite get as much done as I had hoped. I would say I am a little more than half way around the room. I still have the ceiling to do as well. I am never satisfied with my plastering abilities. I’ll get it, and it will eventually look good, but it will take a little more work than I would like.

All I’m doing is skim-coating. I had a lot of areas of old plaster, other areas that had small patches, and then other areas that needed to be completely rebuilt. Two odd things I noticed. First, when I apply the finish plaster over the old plaster it lets off a strong ammonia smell. Not sure why that is. Second, when skim-coating the old plaster I have a working time of a half hour or more. When I skim-coat the new plaster I have a working time of less than 5 minutes.

That new plaster must still be drying, even after 2 weeks. I apply the skim-coat to it and in less than 2 minutes the stuff has the consistency of stiff clay in. In some ways it is easier to work with because you are less likely to leave trowel marks. However, you have very little time to get it right.

On high note I did something today that has been more than 2 years in the making. I put up 2 of the new corner blocks in the kitchen. The idiots who sheet rocked a few rooms back in the 70s sawed off the tops of several of the fancy corner blocks. I had to get them reproduced, which was quite expensive. I wanted to use the salvage old-growth redwood from the 2 story addition I removed. I couldn’t remove the addition until I rewired and re-plumbed the main house because the kitchen and bath I was using was in the addition. It was very gratifying to finally get some of those up. It is sort of like having to chop down trees, so you can mill lumber, so you can build a boat, so you can go fishing, and now I am finally eating the first fish.

The one on the left is original. The one in middle is a cut-off one. The one on the right is new. They are 8.5-inches high. 6.25-inches wide. 1.5-inces thick.