Making Good in Kitchen

Today I made good some plastering in a kitchen in Abingdon Oxon.

I had to render and skim the walls then screed the floor. We black jacked the floor to stop rising damp from coming up. The existing walls had a heavy glossy paint, so could not be just plastered because they were to smooth. So we had to apply an aggregate adhesive/primer to create a mechanical key.

Please see the before and after shots of this project.

Before

After

A good before and after shot

Today I re-skimmed a hallway in my home village of Eynsham. The customer stripped the wallpaper back, which will always damage the existing plaster. It would be a heck of a job to try to apply filler or just to use lining paper in my opinion always a make shift job.

So here are a couple of good before and after shots.

Plaster Skimming over gloss paint or vinyl silk emulsions

 Above an example of a wall treated with an aggregate based plaster primer. Once the primer has set dry the wall can be plastered.

When it comes to doing re-skimming one has to be carefully especially when re-skimming over non-porous services such as vinyl silk or gloss painted surfaces. If PVA adhesive where to be applied to these surfaces it would start to run off the wall due to the lack of suction in the wall and the glue can hang around for hours still wet. Finish plaster should only be applied to PVA  which has gone tacky or sticky.

The best practice though for doing re-skims is to use an aggregate based adhesive/primer. This product adheres to the wall and acts as an excellent mechanical key. This type of product can come in a red or green color and because of the color it is difficult to miss anywhere. Although the aggregate based adhesive primer system is more expensive than PVA it will not let you down and is much more reliable. So my advice is don't try to compromise on cheap materials only use the best!

Testimonial Lime Plastering

Always nice to get an email from a customer who was pleased with some work that I completed recently:

"Mike,

Just to let you know that Janet and I were more than pleased with the work and your enthusiasm to carry out a good job well finished.  You clearly were on our wavelength when it came to dealing with traditional material, and I would have no hesitation recommending you in the future. 

Best Wishes,

Graham Soame."

This was for a lime plastering job I completed in December, here is a picture of the fireplace area

To Hack Off Or Not To Hack Off?

Today I came across a situation with some existing lime plaster on a wall that was suspect hollow. It sounded that way when you tapped it! My school of thought is why leave it to chance, so off it came!

So go with your instinct, remove the old suspect hollow plaster right back to the brick work and replaster!

Best wishes

Mike

Traditional Plastering New Blog

Hello,

This is Mike Robinson and welcome to my new blog! I've been a plasterer for 21 years and to follow will be a series of blogs covering all my future jobs and some of the plastering problems that I will solve.

I hope this helps all readers who have a plastering problem and how they might solve it. Also I will cover materials used and the correct high standard of work that should be achieved.

One of my Specialty skills is working with traditional lime putty plasters and hydraulic lime renders.

Here's to your successful plastering projects!

Best Regards

Mike.