skim coat plastering after chasing cables

I'd like to help him finish it, as it's been a daunting task.but I have concerns over whether or not he's doing it even slightly right. However, he seems to think it just needs to be sanded now and then painted. He replaced the insulation, and attempted to fix the wall himself. He tore it apart, and found that the spray insulation had settled at the bottom and was no longer effective. My boyfriend and I bought a house last year, and there was a wall running up the side of the stairs that seemed to be very drafty.

Working the thinly troweled material with a spray bottle of water or a water brush will help in developing a smooth, dense surface that will perhaps require just a light sanding.Īs has been stated, practice, practice, practice. There are, I am sure, some good videos on YouTube demonstrating troweling compound in a skillful manner to produce the effect you desire. The completion of a true plane with the basecoat also greatly simplifies the application of the finish coat in that pockets of built up finish material do not have to be given additional time to set up for final troweling.Īgain, if you are skim coating for the sake of paint consistency, you do not need to be the thickness you are working toward with the notched trowel concept. Having usually done the more precise method of plastering, I can say that nothing is more pleasing to accomplish or look at than a well plastered room. The vast majority of plaster jobs done DO NOT follow that guideline and are generally a collection of planes that can trick you well enough into thinking that things are true. Nor would your method produce walls of uniform 'plane' as the trowel would still be following the underlying surface and mimic whatever irregularities are within that material.Ī true plaster 'by the book' job calls for developing screeds that are set to a plumb or level plane and basecoat applied to whatever thickness (in reason) is required to get walls and ceilings true to that plane. The sand does give the material better sag resistance but to build up a surface with the method you are proposing is not really necessary if you are just doing a skim to improve surface conditions for a level 5 finish, you don't need to be an 1/8' or thicker as your method would produce. I have built up surfaces with durabond mixed with fine and even coarse sand, depending on the thickness of the build. That delayed set would lead to sagging issues with the joint compounds. All joint compound style materials remain 'sticky' and liquid too long and do not carry the same property of finish plaster to 'draw' into the surface of the basecoat and develop a set in a relatively short time. Having plastered many walls and ceilings and having worked with all forms of joint compound I can tell you that the concept of the notched trowel would probably not produce a good result. Then fill in the spaces the strips were using the first coat of dried mud as a guide. When it dries, pull the strips off the wall (might have to dig out a small section of dried mud from around the strips to get behind it to pull off). Then just screed the mud on using a 4 foot darby or something using the strips as a guide like how you screed sand for a paver patio base using 1' pvc. Use a fast-setting but weak adhesive and fix the strips to the wall vertically every few feet. Will still need a little sanding or possibly just sponging and even possibly a second effortless skilless coat of simply swiping mud over potential shrinkage cracks with a flat trowel/mud knife, but I don't think it's humanly possible to freehand a perfect skim coat especially with glossy paint and when the light hits it just right.Īnother idea is find something that's hard plastic or metal like 1/4' wide strips that are only 1/8' thick and 8 feet long to go from ceiling to floor. Once that sets in like 10 mins, then just use a regular flat trowel/compound knife to go over and fill in the grooves from the first coat and you have a perfect wall. Next, coat the whole wall with the notched trowel trying to keep the same angle of the trowel i.e the blade of the trowel is always as close to 45 degrees to the wall. Mix up hot mud aka setting type mud aka the powder you mix water with instead of the premixed, use 5 min or 20 min or whatever will set fastest but not too fast for the size of job.

Skim coat plastering after chasing cables