Plaster - Day 1

The house is ready to be plastered, and the plastering crew arrived at 7am to start. The cement plaster and a truckload of sand had arrived Friday. Last week the crew put expanded metal lath around all the windows, penetrations (like hose bibs and electric junction boxes). Note the neatly curved lath around the end of the lintel.

They started today by masking off all the windows and places on the adjoining wood (lintels, mostly) and laying plastic on the porch floor and beneath the inside of the parapets.

They put plaster onto the walls using two slightly different techniques. The ‘normal’ method is to use a trowel to apply the plaster from the hod. This method works well around windows, corners, and penetrations — generally smaller areas.The other uses a much larger sheet of metal (about 2’ wide) to transfer plaster from a pile onto uninterrupted expanses of wall.

After masking the windows (not shown above) they started under the porch, but soon migrated to the larger expanses in front of the mud room and garage. Oraldo worked on the inside and top of the parapets from the rooftop, getting wet plaster in 5 gallon buckets.

The crew screwed 1/4” steel strips onto the house to act as screed boundaries to ensure even thickness on the larger areas. These were moved (and the gaps filled in) as the walls were covered. The man who started in the corner of the porch moved on to finish the areas that were covered by other workers. This included very neatly making curves around the ends of the lintels and the bullnose corners into the windows.

After the plaster had largely set, another worker came along with a comb and scratched the surface to provide a grip for the next coat. Much of the detail work (around the vigas, for instance) was left for later.

They have at least another day of work, plus (probably) a third day for the mechanical room and finishing up. Even then there are some areas they could not get — like around the front door — because we are missing things like the door there and into the mechanical room.

During all this the three plumbers came to finish up a few things, the painter came to finish staining (Cabot Pewter Grey), and Jake and I finished lining the garage door opening, putting in bits of blocking for the kitchen cabinets and above the bathroom niche, and along the sunken sides of the mechanical room.

By the way, they did not use the lined lime pit I prepared on Friday.

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