Post date: Aug 23, 2015 3:12:25 AM
Nearly all the drywall has been hung (except the mechanical room and bathroom) and the second coat of stucco (with embedded fiberglass mesh) wraps 2/3 of the house (including around the new front door). That has two implications: I need to keep the cement plaster stucco wet for three days; I can put joint compound (wallboard ‘mud’) in the screw holes (the joints need mud, too, but Eli has a special technique).
Wetting the fresh plaster involves climbing up on the roof and spraying water on the parapets. This takes at least 1/2 hour for the whole house, because the cement really dries out when the sun shines on it, and while the sun is shining some of the water I put on the warm plaster evaporates before it can soak in. Plus it seems to soak in slowly. So I go over each section of wall several times. There are also places I cannot get from the roof, such as under the porch and the lower parts of the walls. So I drag a hose around the house, too. Fortunately we have two 100’ hoses, so this is possible.
Mudding the screw holes is not rocket science, but I find a few screws that are not set deeply enough on each wall, so have to go back with the screwdriver to set these. Around the perforations (mostly electrical junction boxes, but some pipes and wires) I have caulked. This caulk is not perfectly smooth, so I go around each perforation with a sharpened 5” drywall knife to cut it smooth. I also use this knife to cut off excess mud after it has dried, but use a smaller putty knife to apply the mud to the screw holes.
I’m not up to hauling all my tools around, so leave the electric screwdriver on the floor and mark the screws that need setting. Once set beneath the drywall surface I have to fill the hole with mud.
I can only reach about 7’ up the walls, so I use a small scaffold to reach the upper parts of the 9’ walls and the ceilings. That means climbing up and down the scaffold, which is extra tiring, so I can only work about an hour or so at a time. The rest gives the mud time to dry — which is fast in this climate. I find that, for the shallow screw holes — I could put three layers of mud if I were able to get around the entire house in one day.
Of course I cannot do the entire house in one go — not the least because the walls are covered with building supplies leaning against them (mostly drywall scraps — we are not quite finished — but also scaffold, ladders, cement board, wood trim, brooms, etc.). Once we finally get all the drywall installed we can remove the scraps. Once we are done with the plastering, we can take the scaffold back. You can see that I’m getting ahead of things by mudding the drywall. But it is a contribution that does not require much skill.