The Front Room: Getting Plastered
Home Rooms:Front Room Jobs: Plaster
The front room offered Wayne his first attempt at plastering. When we decided to remove the closet from the front bedroom and create a half-bath out of the space, we needed to patch the wall where the closet door once was. Our old house, built in 1908, has walls constructed with lath and plaster. Here is a definition and photo of lath and plaster from Wikipedia.
Yes, we know, dry wall would have been much easier for patching a uniform space like a doorway. However, having just moved into our house, we had a love and respect for its old nature. We decided that we would try to duplicate some of the construction. We also thought it would blend in better with the texture of the remaining wall.
What We Did: Plaster
- Prepared the wooden lath left over from demolishing the closet walls (Removed any nails and cut them to size).
- Installed a stud within the doorway to divide up the wide span.
- Nailed up the lath, being sure to leave large enough vertical gaps for the plaster to cling to.
- For good measure, we also attached metal lath as another adhesion aid.
- Mixed up some plaster to the consistency of grainy mashed potatoes, and plopped it onto the lath. Made sure that it was oozing through the gaps between the lath. These oozy bits, or keys, are what keeps the plaster clinging to the lath. The first layer is called a scratch coat, since lines are scratched into the surface to help the next layer adhere to it.
- Mixed up some more plaster and applied another coat, called a brown coat. This coat is used to build up the surface and define the wall better. It is made a bit shy of where you want the wall surface to be, since a finer plaster is used for the top coat.
- The third and final coat is called the finish coat. It uses a fine plaster (without any of the grainy aggregate of the others) mixed to the consistency of whipped cream. This coat requires a bit more finesse, since you have to match up with the existing wall. A long tool, called a darby, can be used to help make the whole thing smooth and consistent.
There definitely is a learning curve when doing this work. It's messy, too. Or, it's messy when you're learning! We waited about a month to paint the wall. We wanted to give the wall plenty of time to cure.
Though unpainted plaster is quite lovely, we had already decided to paint the whole room a pretty shade of green. I think it's kind of sage-like, but our paint store calls this color Guacamole. Either way, it's rich, but not overwhelming (the color quality of the photo is a bit off, unfortunately.)
Voila! Can you tell there used to be a door in that corner?
