Today we began a project in Cheektowaga NY (Cleveland Hill), repairing water damage to a plaster ceiling and wall in a living room. We began this project by putting down rubber backed drop-cloths and creating a dust containment box around the repair. Then we began carefully chipping away at the water damage with a hatchet. We are not randomly pounding the wall and ceiling, instead we are skillfully tapping the plaster to remove the loose, damaged material. The idea is to not punch a hole through the rocklath.
This area had been repaired at least once before by someone who wasn’t quite sure what they were doing. Their material of choice looked to be that “Plaster in a tub” stuff made by DAP. We removed it all, and removed the plaster finish below it. It appears to me like someone attempted a plaster repair, broke through the rocklath, panicked and packed it with the goop from DAP. Which doesn’t go very hard by the way, as we removed most of it with a putty knife.
We removed the broken rocklath, squared off the hole, and then replaced it with a piece of blueboard. Then coated everything in the pink stuff – which is a special glue, that promotes the adhesion of new plaster to old plaster. Applying this to a patch, actually makes it more difficult to get the plaster to stick.
We seem to have skipped a couple of steps in our pictures. 🤦♂️ We applied plaster basecoat over blueboard, to bring it up to the surface of the existing basecoat. This prevents a high spot in the patch, and makes keeping it flat a lot easier. Also, packing 1/2″ of finish over such a large area, can lead to check-cracking. While that was setting, we broke for lunch.
When we got back from lunch, the basecoat was still not set. So we started with the ceiling, to give the wall more time to firm up. We mixed up lime putty and plaster of paris, and then applied it to the ceiling, and finally the wall. By the time we got to the wall, the basecoat was firm, it was still setting. We will see if the finish holds tomorrow.. It should, but if it doesn’t we will redo it. This basecoat can sometimes take hours to set. You’d think USG would standardize it across every bag.
We are repainting the entire room, so I saw some areas next to the fireplace that I didn’t like, so I fixed those areas as well. The reason the basecoat isnt finished is because it was 4pm, and the basecoat was still too soft to finish. Stacy feeling left out from all the fun I was having, filled in the area next to the fireplace that I chiseled out, with durabond.
More to come!
