The plastering trade has, for thousands of years, passed down the knowledge and skill of the trade from one generation to the next. Except for the inclusion of modern machinery, the way and manner plaster is applied to a wall really hasn’t changed much since before the time of Christ.

We’ve all watched and enjoyed the Discovery Channel television show “How It’s Made” and maybe even had a passing thought about how great it would be to have such a program showcase and explain to the general public what it is we do.

Dimitris Spiliadis’ great-grandfather once owned a hotel in Constantinople, which was lost when the Turks invaded the magnificent and historic city (now known as Istanbul).

Are contractors who pay their employees cash or who misclassify their workers as “subcontractors” for the purpose of avoiding taxes, worker compensation insurance cutting into your business?

As the director of a national training program for plasterers, I help develop and implement training criteria and curriculum materials for young people just entering the trade. So, nothing gives me greater pleasure than to witness young men and women, who’ve got a few years under their belt, excelling at the craft-especially in a down economy! 

When I first began to learn how to plaster, if someone would have told me then that it would one day become necessary for me to learn to speak Italian, I would have chuckled and turned away.

I know that it has been a while since I was a small remodeling contractor, but has the state of the art really fallen this far?

I stood along the rail of an upper tier at the Nashville Convention Center, home of the 2009 AWCI Convention and Intex Expo trade show. I watched two middle-aged men approaching each other on opposing escalators, one going up, the other going down.