Lime plastering.......

[skier-hughes]

With the lighter days and a bit of time to put to doing some work, I got down to lime plastering the lath wall I built to insulate the cold north wall.
Here are a few pictures of the work in progress. I'm currently waiting for the lime to dry to do my second base coat, which is taking far far longer to do on the laths than on the brick wall on the end.

 

[skier-hughes]

It is quite hard work squashing the plaster onto the laths in order for the plaster to make its way between them and form nibs to hold it all in place, but after one day I had half of it done, which was my goal.


Day two went just as well as day one, maybe more so, as on the morning of day two, all of day one's plaster was still where I'd put it!!!!



I was hoping to be doing the second base coat this weekend, but as it is taking so long to dry, I've resorted to more woodwork, tidying up the doorway, pictures to follow.

I bought Ty Mawr pre-mixed haired base coat, knocking it up in my clarke mixer.

 

[MikeG]

Nice to see the job being done the way it should be (although I like to see a plate underneath posts ).

You may have already discovered this, but I'll say it anyway for the benefit of others: lime render will turn new oak black on contact. Luckily, you've done a fairly neat job so far of keeping it off the face of the timber, but I always tape the timber first when I'm plastering. And I use duck tape, because it will stain through masking tape if left on for any length of time. I also specify this whenever I show plastering or rendering between new oak framing. If that oak is green, then I suggest keeping the finished plaster level back behind the face line of the studs, to allow for shrinkage.

 

[skier-hughes]

The original lath wall is mostly gone, some remnants of it behind the single brick skin wall that was put up. As this wall backs onto roof space that for me is inaccessible, I built this lath wall level with the chimney breast (the brick bit on the far left) which allowed me to put some sheepswool insulation between the brick and the lath. Just doing that increased the warmth in the room. I can't wait until it is all plastered windows are in and heating can go on.....

Ideally I'd have put a plate along the bottom, but at the time I was working to a very tight timescale, my Son's wedding, but in the end, due to supplier problems, that went by the wayside. Other family problems meant a further delay, which is why the wall was built some time ago!!

I pondered taping the wood, but in the end I thought it might add a bit of character, which is why I've not been to bothered about mopping up the odd few splashes either.

The oak is quite green. I was going to plaster flush, but thanks for the heads up, I'll keep it just below.

 

[JoceAndChris]

It looks amazing Graham! Not showing you ours!

 

[MatthewC]

Looks lovely.

When my house was done (was it really 7 years ago?), we plastered a lath wall (both sides) between two bedrooms and it took absolutely ages to dry between coats. I realised afterwards that we would have been better off to do just one side at a time. We could see on other walls how quickly it set (a day or three, as I recall - the house was pretty cold) but that wall took about three or four weeks.

Yes, the curved wall really puzzled me until I saw the caption!

 

[skier-hughes]

2 weeks in and it's dried enough to do coat 2............ I'll be back later