drywallhttp://www.brooklynrowhouse.com/taxonomy/term/5/atom/feed2007-03-05T00:22:28-05:00Wall Prep Tipshttp://www.brooklynrowhouse.com/node/262006-10-23T10:38:54-04:002007-02-13T17:07:24-05:00Steve
Bill over at Enon Hall posted a cool Top Ten list. There are some good tips there. Ya'll should check it out (although my lumberyard likes to see double-spaced, typed materials lists with product codes and a letterhead, preferably faxed in advance).
Since I'm in "wall prep mode" I thought I'd post my own Top Ten in that area. So without further ado...
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Bill over at Enon Hall posted a cool Top Ten list. There are some good tips there. Ya'll should check it out (although my lumberyard likes to see double-spaced, typed materials lists with product codes and a letterhead, preferably faxed in advance).
Since I'm in "wall prep mode" I thought I'd post my own Top Ten in that area. So without further ado...
Top Ten Tips for the Wall Obsessed
Scrape the walls thoroughly with a two-inch blade. A wider blade will miss depressions. On plaster, tap the walls lightly. Brown coat plaster which has lost its bonding will sound hollower than the surrounding wall. Paint which is losing its adhesion will have an orange peel look to it.
Scrub the walls and ceiling with TSP before you repair them. This will remove airborne grease, oily hand residue, cigarette smoke, etc which can reduce the bonding of your plaster or compound. For enameled walls, sand them lightly to reduce the sheen.
Drywall screws leave a sharp rim around the hole which leads to those little round cracks we've all seen before. Before taping, whack each hole with a hammer to dimple them. Do the same with any exposed drywall paper edges that won't be hidden by tape.
Prepare plaster cracks by digging a V groove down the center with a beer can opener or painter's 5-in-1 tool. This will remove loose plaster and increase the bonding surface for the repair.
For plaster, apply a masonry bonding agent to the immediate repair area. Careful with drips; it's not easy to clean up after it dries.
On plaster walls, use plastic adhesive-backed mesh tape to repair cracks. Use plaster at least for the initial coat. Paper tape should not be used on plaster cracks. It's made for drywall, which has built-in expansion seams every four or eight feet. Plaster is a solid wall-to-wall mass which develops stress fractures due to weak points in the framing. The crack is just a symptom. Even after it's repaired it will have a tendency to crack again so you need to use a tape which can take the seasonal expansion and contraction.
For either drywall or plaster, make the first coat as thin as possible. Leave just enough plaster/compound under the tape to ensure a good bonding. Use a side light to look for any high spots. Don't obsess over any low ones. You'll fix that in the next coat.
Keep your blades clean. I have two sets of knives with one set soaking in a bucket of water. I swap them every fifteen minutes or so.
Don't contaminate your joint compound with grit. Never return unused joint compound from your palette or hopper to the bucket. Throw it out. By the same token, avoid returning unused compound from your blade to the palette. Just slap it over the next joint. I like to work with two knives: one for application and one to clean off its blade.
Before adding another coat, run a dry blade down the repair to remove any loose compound which could gouge the following coat.
Ten not enough? Good, because here's Rule #0 -- my cardinal rule for wall finishing:
Always work with a side light! This is critical on the final coat and sanding. A side light will reveal high and low spots which will probably show up later under normal room lighting. During sanding, I hold a 100-watt spot light in my left hand and shine it down the repair. It will also show drywall paper that's been roughed up by too-aggressive sanding and which will look terrible if you apply an enamel finish coat.
]]>A hundred pounds of plaster later...http://www.brooklynrowhouse.com/node/212006-10-06T12:33:30-04:002008-06-05T11:38:11-04:00Steve
There was only one mishap. Jack the Dog, my Newfoundland, was standing at the base of the ladder looking up at me when about 8 ounces of wet plaster fell off my palette and landed squarely on his head and muzzle. Against his black fur it looked like he'd been smacked in the face with a custard pie. So there was a quick diversion to the back yard for a bath before the plaster dried. He took both ordeals in good spirit but when I got back my batch of plaster was hard as a rock. So I had to run out for another bag.
If you're new to our three-part closet drama, Episode One was the
framing. It was followed by the exciting tragedy in Part Two: the skinning, or the Drywall Strikes Back.
Anyway, I cut my homemade knife to the profile I needed from a scrap of masonite. I gave it a couple of coats of urethane to seal the open edge and to keep the wet plaster from sticking to it.
I drew a vertical pencil line on the wall as a guide for the outside edge of the knife. Then I painted two coats of Quikrete bonding adhesive on the wall.
Plaster should be applied over a tacky bonding agent so before the second coat dried I mixed up a bag and a half of plaster and water spiked with a half cup of white vinegar to retard the plaster from setting too quickly. I made the mix a little wetter than normal so the knife wouldn't gouge the plaster.
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There was only one mishap. Jack the Dog, my Newfoundland, was standing at the base of the ladder looking up at me when about 8 ounces of wet plaster fell off my palette and landed squarely on his head and muzzle. Against his black fur it looked like he'd been smacked in the face with a custard pie. So there was a quick diversion to the back yard for a bath before the plaster dried. He took both ordeals in good spirit but when I got back my batch of plaster was hard as a rock. So I had to run out for another bag.
If you're new to our three-part closet drama, Episode One was the
framing. It was followed by the exciting tragedy in Part Two: the skinning, or the Drywall Strikes Back.
Anyway, I cut my homemade knife to the profile I needed from a scrap of masonite. I gave it a couple of coats of urethane to seal the open edge and to keep the wet plaster from sticking to it.
I drew a vertical pencil line on the wall as a guide for the outside edge of the knife. Then I painted two coats of Quikrete bonding adhesive on the wall.
Plaster should be applied over a tacky bonding agent so before the second coat dried I mixed up a bag and a half of plaster and water spiked with a half cup of white vinegar to retard the plaster from setting too quickly. I made the mix a little wetter than normal so the knife wouldn't gouge the plaster.
I started from the bottom of the wall, laying in a thick bed of plaster about three feet at a time. Despite the retardant, I had to work quickly. When wet plaster hits dry plaster it seems to reduce the working time to a handful of minutes.
The first coat looked bloody awful -- like the surface of the moon -- but the profile was perfect. I let it dry overnight, painted on more bonding adhesive and repeated with most of the remaining plaster to fill in the large voids.
After that dried, I sanded down the rough spots with 100 grit and an orbital sander attached to the central vac. (The vacuum's exhaust port also laid down a thin coat of fine white dust all over my back yard... the spider webs under the deck looked amazing). Then I mixed up the last of the plaster and troweled on a thin, wet finish coat.
There was a final sanding and a cosmetic touch up with joint compound then...
My first architectural plaster! And hopefully my last.
Was it worth all this time and work? Certainly not, but I could say the same about most of my obsessive projects here and that doesn't stop me. I just wouldn't want to do it again.
But it blends in better with the existing upstairs walls, which I realized only recently don't have any square outside corners.
My plumber friend showed up and sized the replacement radiator for me: 19x32. When I learned how much this chunk of cast iron weighed, I decided to hire a plumbing company to do the job. That plumber specced a whole different radiator called an "element". He said my friend specced a radiator that's both too small to be used in a convection application like this as well as a size which isn't made anyway.
Total price for this job is a whopping $989. Yikes! The element alone costs $500 and weighs 300 pounds. I know that Sessa Plumbing ain't cheap but they do excellent work.
After some mental back/forth about whether to do the job myself, I fell back on my Sun Tzu mantra: pick your battles. In this case, lugging a 300 pound radiator up two flights of stairs is something I can't do, especially with my still-healing elbow, nor is it something I want someone without insurance to do.
]]>You don't know until you tryhttp://www.brooklynrowhouse.com/node/202006-10-01T10:09:03-04:002007-03-05T00:22:28-05:00Steve The story of this closet starts here. I could have saved myself a lot of problems if I'd just built a square corner on that closet. But I really wanted a radius here to match two other curved walls in the room as well as one in the hallway leading into the bedroom. I haven't even started thinking about how I'm gonna do the 9" red oak baseboard moulding around that curve. I imagine there will be a few blog entries about that ordeal too.
]]> The story of this closet starts here. I could have saved myself a lot of problems if I'd just built a square corner on that closet. But I really wanted a radius here to match two other curved walls in the room as well as one in the hallway leading into the bedroom. I haven't even started thinking about how I'm gonna do the 9" red oak baseboard moulding around that curve. I imagine there will be a few blog entries about that ordeal too.
Anyway, I bought two sheets of 1/4" drywall at Kamco, one for experimentation and one for production. I sliced one sheet up into the 14" panels I needed, scored the backs and stuck them in my steam shower for an hour. But that didn't give me the flex I needed so I poured warm water on them for about 15 minutes. As soon as I took them out of the bath I knew it wasn't going to work. The panels crumbled about halfway to the radius I needed. Drat!
So, Yet Another Plan B. I'm going to attempt to make the curve with plaster and a home-made plaster knife cut to the radius I need. It will have wings to rest on the surrounding 1/2" drywall.
I sliced up the remaining 1/4" drywall into 4" strips and screwed them to the studs giving me a sort of octagonal profile. Then I took a rasp and eased the corners on those panels so they'll be below the profile I need. Because the surrouding drywall is 1/2" this should give me the foundation I need to build up that curve with plaster. Then I taped everything together using plaster (not joint compound) and crosshatched it with a taping knife to give the next coat something to key to.
The next job is a run to Lowes to see if they have a plaster bonding agent like PlasterWeld. I also need to look for some material I can use to make that plaster profiling knife. At the moment, all I can think of is masonite with a couple of coats of sealer on the edge to reduce friction.
It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to get me in the ballpark. As the saying goes, "there ain't no f*ck up that a sander can't fix up". I'm just dreading that job with my lungs still congested from my recent bad cold.
I'm going to have to retard the heck out the plaster to give me a good working time. I usually use white vinegar for this, although milk works in a pinch.
A neighbor asked why I don't just do this with joint compound. Joint compound is just liquid dust. When dry, large accumlations of joint compound have almost no hardness or grip.
I drew a vertical pencil line on the wall as a guide for the outside edge of the knife. Then I painted two coats of Quikrete bonding adhesive on the wall.
My first architectural plaster! And hopefully my last.
The story of this closet starts here. I could have saved myself a lot of problems if I'd just built a square corner on that closet. But I really wanted a radius here to match two other curved walls in the room as well as one in the hallway leading into the bedroom. I haven't even started thinking about how I'm gonna do the 9" red oak baseboard moulding around that curve. I imagine there will be a few blog entries about that ordeal too.
So, Yet Another Plan B. I'm going to attempt to make the curve with plaster and a home-made plaster knife cut to the radius I need. It will have wings to rest on the surrounding 1/2" drywall.