New Skills

3rd floor stairwell

There's nothing like a project house to teach one new skills.

The front bedroom of the house has some water damage on its curved ceiling. Normally, when I do a plaster patch, I reinforce the hole, cut a piece of sheetrock to more-or-less fit, and tape and mud around the edges. In this case, that won't work. Sheetrock doesn't curve well. 

I looked up methods of traditional plaster patching on the internet. Near as I can piece together, the best way to properly patch plaster is to repair the underlying lathe boards, apply a couple of coats of plaster patch, then end with a coat or three of Sheetrock joint compound. (If you're really good, you can do plaster on all the layers, but the stuff is deucedly hard to sand, so the method does not come highly recommended. And, I'm moderately OK, but I'm not really good at this. Let's not kid ourselves.)

While I am pretty sure my patching skills are up to the task, I decided maybe, just maybe, I should practice on an out of the way repair spot first, before tackling the highly visible bedroom ceiling. What the heck. So, earlier this week, I started on the fix on the ceiling of the stairwell going up to the 3rd floor. The spot meets all my test criteria - it's out of the way, a similar type of ceiling repair, and approximately the same size as the hole in the front bedroom.

So far, it's going pretty well. I replaced the rotten lathe strips (and even put a new piece of insulation behind the boards). I covered all that with a first, then a second coat of plaster patch stuff. It didn't start out so well. Every time I'd pick up the knife full of goop and start to apply it to the ceiling, a good half of it would fall to the floor and get dirt crumbs in it which made it useless. I cussed under my breath, kept at it, and figured out the trick to make the stuff stick. I also learned to hold the mud bucket underneath the putty knife, so when it didn't stick, it would fall back into the bucket where I could try again.

Today, I put the first coat of Sheetrock mud on the mess. I wasn't sure how to tell if it was even close to level across, then remembered a trick one of the guys who once did work for me told me. You take a long straight board, hold it straight against the undamaged part of the wall, and let it overlap the patch. Slide it down the wall, and it'll scrape away the high parts. I tried it, and sure enough, it worked. *whew*

I figure it'll take me a couple of extra coats of mud and sanding to get it remotely level, but I do think I've got it. It was definitely a good idea to practice in an out-of-the-way spot first. 

Yup, yup. I can picture the final ceiling now. I'll be showing someone the restored house and say, "see where I patched the hole up there?  No?  Great!" Then, I'll smugly mentally pat myself on the back. Who says old dogs can't learn new tricks?