Plastered and coved
A bit of work on Wednesday evening was all I managed to achieve in the week, the rest of my evenings were with my little girl or working late at work. Not good on the getting the house done agenda but this week I had the luxury of taking the Friday off from work which meant a free two days to work on the house weekend, whoooohooo.
The Wednesday evening was basically spent getting a bit of bonding plastering done, the second coat of what I’d done at the weekend, that bit that had fallen off from under the window. I’d bought a couple of sacks of bonding and finishing plaster and that evening I managed to tackle a couple of jobs around the house before I retired for the evening, not much but it was cold and I was dog-tired.
The weekend was going to be a bit more complicated.
I’d convinced myself that I was up to plastering now, I wasn’t a firm believer in my being a master craftsman but I knew I could do a decent job. However, was I up to doing a ceiling, well I wasn’t convinced but I decided to give it a go… despite ceilings being notoriously difficult… in what was already a difficult exercise. It was only for SAS plasterers and I was more of a Boy Scout plasterer, if even that. Anyway I set aside the Friday to do this.
By midday on Friday I’d still not started, I had dozens of little jobs to do first. The fire needed setting, the washing needed starting, Black Friday deals needed investigating, my mobile needed replacing (my current one had got donked up) just lotsa stuff I hadn’t strictly planned on taking a morning to do.
Just before I got under-way on the plastering I gave some thought to fixing the crack in the ceiling. The crack had probably been caused when a plumber had had a bit of a leak one evening, the one where I’d arrived home to find a drip, that one. It wasn’t a huge damp patch or anything it was just a big crack and it needed some work before being smeared with plaster. I’d dealt with this before and all it needed were a couple of screws inserted into the joists to support the hanging board before the plastering could begin. What should have been a two minute job leapt into the realms of a two hour job. Basically I couldn’t get purchase on the nearest joist from underneath and I had to lift a floorboard or three upstairs to nail down the positions of the required joists. The joists turned out to be inches away from the crack and in the end I had to insert a bit of timber between the joists and screw into that instead. It wasn’t ideal but it was far better than nothing, I was lucky too not to have screwed into some of the new pipework on my exploratory drilling, still I needed a bit of luck.
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Once I’d done this and had a nibble of lunch it was well after two in the afternoon. Still how long could one ceiling take?
By 2:30 am the next morning I was finished, I mean I was totally finished, it had taken ages.
Half way through I had ran out of plaster and had to drive to the closest town to fill up with more plaster. I had also bought a couple of four packs of coving and a tub of adhesive I would need on coving Sunday. This had been done in record time as I was aware that the applied plaster was going off, it all took an hour.
It was aching, knackering work, your hands were firmly above your head splodging plaster on or polishing it off, it was really hard to do and a difficult technique to master. By the time I had to visit the shops my arms and neck were getting rather sore, it didn’t help too that when I was loading the car with coving I managed to lump my head against the car door frame, my neck actually crunched… erk. I treat myself to a KFC in sympathy for my poor aching bones and the KFC helped me motor on with the work when I got home, no cooking and extra energy. Actually in hindsight I reckon if I’d not been doing the plastering my neck could have seized up after that knock, however all the disco wriggling one does up a ladder in applying plaster does tend to loosen one up and iron out any cricks and crannies.
Still it was hard work, once you’ve dolloped on plaster you then have to quickly go back to the start of the strip (I do it in strips) and polish out the imperfections, then back to the start and polish out more of them after applying a wet brush, then do it again. All the time this strip is drying and its’ important that it’s not dry when you go to the next strip, it’s also important that you do it all at once – or so they tell me – that’s why I worked until 2:30 am.
Not only is it hard work it’s also very very messy. I really wished I’d covered over the floor, the amount of plaster on the floor rivalled that plaster I’d managed to persuade to adhere to the ceiling. Still by strip three the finish wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination but it wasn’t too bad either, all the loose paint had been covered, the cracks had been covered too and any imperfections were clearly scratched out and would be a doddle to fill and smooth out later.
However on strip four things were going a bit wobbly, it was by that point after midnight and I was finding it difficult to get the timings right and by the time I finished the strip the plaster I’d just applied at the start of the strip was a bit too hardened to iron out. Still it would fill and it wasn’t a bad job at all for a first go. I’m sure it’ll look perfect by the time I finish.
Anyway midnight came and went, I finished off the ceiling, I finished off a spot at the top of the fireplace and I even covered up that bit of bonding plaster. By 2:30 am I packed in, I threw all my tools in a bucket of water and stripped off and got in a steaming bath before retiring to bed at around 3:30am.
The next day was a day with my little girl at my folks, great I could get some kip and it would be away from my building site. Well so I thought, no sooner had we stepped out of the car than an electrician pulled up and pitched up at my parents’ front door. Noooo, they’d booked a sparks for the day, there was no getting away from it, selfish old me would have to stay awake for a couple more hours. Anyway by mid-afternoon they’d gone so it wasn’t too bad, however my little girl had little concept of “don’t wake up Daddy he’s tired” and spent much of the afternoon waking my up to whisper to me why it was important that I should get some sleep 🙂
The next day – understandably – I had a bit of a sleep in and again my early start on the coving deteriorated into a 2pm start after I’d done a dozen little jobs around the house and spent ages on the phone trying to figure out why Vodafone were being such an arse about my mobile contract.
I’m pretty good at coving but I knew it would be a challenge to get the full room done in a day, so despite being peckish I decided to forgo lunch and snacked all the day while working on the coving. I was adamant that it would be done by the end of the day and I was equally adamant that I wouldn’t be doing it late into the evening.
I started badly, I’d found all my coving tools in preparation for the work and suddenly I had an attack of brain fug. I’d put my coving in the neatly marked up mitre box, cut an inside left and an inside right to fit into my first corner and it just wasn’t right (or left for that matter), it was just wrong.
I came at it again and after some muddling I’d decided that despite the marking having been correct for all my previous coving jobs that somehow the box must have been mislabelled and I’d accidentally got my cuts right despite this mislabelling. I scribbled out two labels on the mitre box and started again and still it was a disaster, it was all wrong, I looked at it up and down, this way and that and I still couldn’t figure out was wrong.
I really spent around a half an hour trying to figure out what I was doing wrong and it just wouldn’t sink in, there was just no eureka there to be had. It felt as though I was suffering from a mild case of dementia, or that’s how I’m sure it must feel, I just couldn’t get a solution and I was beginning to get worried and then I saw it, the label on the upright of the mitre box that simply said “wall side”!!! Now hang on if that’s the wall side then why I have got the ceiling side of the coving laying along that part of the mitre box… eureka…. I had the coving in upside down.
Needless to say all my original labels were correct once this had been discovered, so more scribbling out was in order.
Anyway I made quick work of the corners with four corners whipped out in no time, a set of guide lines were etched and I satisfyingly splodged the necessary coving into place.
See my coving tips on http://mydreamhouse.co.uk/coving-tips/
Next the chimney and a bit of an obtuse angle to deal with. Now any angle that’s not 90 degrees is a bit of a problem, this was more like 110 degrees so it was a bit more than that, anyway I persevered and there’s still a big pair of gaps to fill but hey, I’m a third Dan filling-plaster master, I’m equal to that, bring on the gapping.
By this point it was getting obvious that I would need more coving adhesive and more coving, so resplendent in absolutely filthy clothes covered in plaster I headed off down to the shops, well how full could the shops be on a Sunday. Well very full it turns out, Black Friday being Black Friday and this was the Sunday following it and there were still people out in their droves looking for a bargain. Homebase was full of lovely well-dressed sorts, I dribbled in, picked up some coving, adhesive and some panel pins and a left as quickly as I could, leaving a crumbly trail of drying plaster dust behind me.
Screwfix for a Nest thermostat stand next, this turned out to be a waste of time as it doesn’t come with a base to fix in the thermostat, you need to use the one that came with the thermostat, the one that is now firmly fixed to my bedroom wall. My intention of buying the stand was so I could either have the thermostat fixed to my wall or portable in the stand, well as the stand doesn’t come with all the necessary gubbins and relies upon you having the base to hand that came with the thermostat then it just seems a bit of a waste of time and money. Why have a stand (that’s not complete), does that make any sense, was that a mini-tanty I just threw there.
Anyway back to the house, still no food apart from cakes and tea once in a while. My cakes 🙂 yum, I had been at my folks the night before, my Mum had pressed me with lots of cakes as I left. My Mum and Dad are the best.
Armed with extra adhesive and extra coving I made short-ish work of the remaining lengths and by around eight I’d finished. The coving was all up and drying, little panel pins fixing it into place where it would slip and little gaps smiling menacingly between the strips of coving and the corners. It still needed finishing with a dab of filler here and there but I was happy to do that another day. The coving was up, the ceiling was drying and I’d even done some bits of wall too, my weekend work was surprisingly done to completion for once.
I had a bit of food, a pie – again supplied by my lovely Mum – and some snacky food with a big mug of tea.
After this I was resolved to get some tidying done and I then spent the best part of an hour chipping away at my plaster encrusted tools. The ones I’d left in a bucket of water after the post-midnight work were the worst, the plaster on them was nearly an inch deep in places, it was a lot of work to get them finished. Once done there was the kitchen that needed finishing, the rubbish and detritus of days of working and snacking needing sweeping, binning and chipping, the house was really just a hole at this point, by 9:30 pm it wasn’t looking too bad.
Once finished I stuffed all my clothes in the washer, ran in the nip through the uncurtained downstairs room – ooops sorry neighbours – to the bathroom, a bath, Doctor Who (not too bad) and then bed.
Phew I need a day at work to relax 🙂