Question: When plastering over a basecoat, how do you stop the smooth coat finish from drying so rapidly? Also, if you notice a bubble or blister while applying the smooth coat, what is the best way to deal with these problems?
Rachel,
San Francisco
This is a very special column to me. It marks seven years of writing this column and to me that is a great milestone. It seems like yesterday when I submitted my first article back in 1999 and time seems to have just flown by.
Lately, I've gotten a tremendous amount of e-mails and letters that keep asking the same basic questions, namely, what steps should be taken to do repairs and when to patch vs. resurface.
We'll go two different directions this time around. First, we're discussing an older home and a repair project I did recently and an exciting plaster finish that I'm sure you'll be interested in knowing more about.
I live in France and have found it very difficult to find a person who does plastering. I have been back to England to buy the materials, as the man I found to do the work said he cannot work with the lime-based products available here.
In the January and February columns, we talked over what factors are involved in estimating a project. This month marks a starting point for us to look at some projects a lot closer than we've done in the past.
Helping you learn the fine art of plastering is one of the main goals of this column. Included in that is the skill of how to estimate projects. It's the profits from plastering that pay the bills and keep things going. With this in mind, last month we started talking about what I consider eight important factors that are involved in estimating jobs. We used the acronym "ESTIMATE" to outline the eight points.
Recently, on my weekly radio show, I interviewed a man who I have admired for years, David Oreck, the vacuum- and air-cleaner inventor and sales person extraordinaire. He's 82 years old, still rides a Harley to work everyday and flies his vintage airplanes on a regular basis. He truly loves life.
Every once in a while, I like to take a look back over the projects I've done over the past year. Usually, one or two of them stand out as noteworthy, and this month's column is a review of one that I think you can profit from.