Ryedale's lime

[Anonymous]

Just to say that we went yesterday to collect a second batch of ready mixed lime plaster from Rydale Conservation in Yorkshire. It's very good stuff indeed to use, and pleasant people to deal with. Very impressed so far.

I'm sure others sell good lime products, it's just we haven't had dealings with others. I feel ready now over the winter to fill in the holes in the staircase walls! Loose, crumbly, some filled with gypsum - not good.

 

[Anonymous]

Yes the lime's lovely to work with, and ready mixed mortars and plasters are a great help.

I'm still 'knocking up' with a spot board and shovel - helps keep me warm in my central heating-less house!

I have similar problems with gypsum patch repairs and crumbly lime. I'm trying to keep as much of the original lime stuff as possible, but have decided to leave the gypsum alone where it's in good nick. I have hacked off the gypsum and cement 'damp proofing' from the external walls though, although they probaby brushed PVA onto the stone when they did it :/

There's so much work that needs doing on the rest of the house that I can't really justify making even more work for myself by removing all the gypsum. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Ian

 

[Anonymous]

No. I agree, pointless where it's doing no harm to remove it.

Trouble is, ours was badly done and some parts of the repair have literally been done by hand - the fingermarks are there!

 

[Anonymous]

Ha! The person who plastered some of my house must have used a tea-spoon, judging by the finish.

That all 'accidentally fell off' though whilst I was doing something else, so I've had to redo it with lime plaster.

 

[Anonymous]

Its one of the sad things about my house - that in most of the rooms, etc. the previous owners have skimmed over all the original lime work with gypsum plaster.

I cant see that there is anything to do apart from wait until it falls off and then redo the whole wall.

One point - some of the lime plaster apperas to be directly applied to brickwork - does that work??

Thanks

 

[Anonymous]

Yep - you can render directly onto masonry or brickwork, but you need to:

a: wet it down well
b: use less hair in the mix than you would for lath work, otherwise it won't stick.

You *may* be able to lift some of the gypsum finish off and redo in lime, but that'll probably also detach the surrounding lime.

Where I've removed areas of gyspum (down to the stone), I've also *carefully* tried to remove the adjacent gypsum skim. In some cases I've done this successfully, and have left the lime plaster backing coats in situ. I should be able to blend in the new plaster with the old, when I apply the lime finish coat.

What I'm not going to do is hack off all the gypsum skim if it takes the old lime plaster with it - far too much mess and extra work!!!

Cheers

Ian

 

[Anonymous]

Coincidently Bob from Rydedale phoned me this morning and we had a long chat about lime in general.
Now, if you have'nt tried his stuff yet you ought to cos it is certainly the best that I have ever used.
The skim/finish plaster is particularly good and is beautiful to use because of the very fine sand and putty from which it is made. However, Bob tells me that he is now producing a lime filler that is even finer. This could be very useful for repairing small cracks and surface imperfections - sort of conservation polyfilla! This has got to be a winner for those walls that are not really bad enough to re skim.
Mike.