6.21.2007

While the Boys are Away...

...the girls will...plaster?

Renovation has been on a temporary hiatus this week, with kidney stone recuperation, a visit from Grammie and Al, and now Bren and TVFH are on their way to Vancouver, British Colombia, to provide the soundtrack for a week-long national YoungLife retreat.

With Bren gone, I plan on distracting myself from the eeriness of an ill-lit, relatively unfamiliar, somewhat creaky home by tackling a huge project.

We have plaster walls. They are very porous, and have been patched poorly over the years.



Paint will undoubtedly make these flaws even more obvious, necessitating a "skim coat" of new plaster in the living room, dining room, and on one wall in the Master Bedroom.

In addition to being uneven, the walls are dirty.



Ammonia only goes so far against 80 years of smoke and neglect. At least we don't have to stew about where to hang our pictures.



What you see here may look like a poorly executed 80s faux finish, but it's really a thin coat of plaster in various stages of dryness. I'm applying it with a rubber grout floater, and it's remotely reminiscent of the days when I did this for a living:



Ah, good old Baskin & Robbins. Ladies, all you have to do to lose weight while eating all the ice cream you could ever want is walk a mile to and from work in 115 degree, 85% humidity Oklahoma heat. That, and come home every night smelling like curdled milk. I digress.




When the manufacturer's instructions say this stuff hardens quickly, they mean it. However, it's taking forever to dry on the wall. Hopefully tomorrow after work I can sand down the portion of wall I covered today and see how I did. I'll let you know.

1 comment:

Cecile said...

How did you even out your walls? Were they painted previously? Did you have to remove the paint first? We are in the process of renovating our bungalow near Colfax and I'm trying to get inspired for this monumental task!