Plastering & Painting

A couple of weeks ago we finally started to do some of the plastering prep work around our recently installed bifold doors and with the occasional glimpse of sunshine we’re starting to get really excited about being able to use them.

We’re so happy with how the door looks, but it’s definitely let down by the unfinished wall and the fact that there’s a 60 cm drop when you open them! I think we’d better get our decking built as soon as possible!

Having already dry lined the wall with plasterboard (you can read more about how we did it here) the next step was to plaster the wall.

Plastering isn’t one of my favourite things to do, but small walls like this one are so much more doable than larger ones where I find myself rushing so much to get everything on and smooth before it dries.

With each wall I plaster it does get easier and the results are better (not that they were ever bad), but there’s no way I’m ever going to plaster a ceiling again. Jan and I almost killed each other when I plastered the ceiling of the small bedroom at the back of our house!

When you see people plastering it always looks so calm and artful, but when I plaster I couldn’t feel more stressed and rushed. We still have the whole kitchen to plaster later this year and I’m guessing that I’m either going to be pretty good by the time I’ve finished or will have a complete fit and throw my tools out of the window!

Although I moan about having to plaster, it actually doesn’t feel that difficult. I’m still really glad I went on a plastering course (you can read about it here) as it’s something I wouldn’t have attempted otherwise and by plastering ourselves we’ve already managed to save a lot of money.

I always need my little helper aka. Jan to help mixing and cleaning tools while I’m already trying to apply plaster to the wall (and of course have someone to moan at when I drop a huge lump of plaster which splats on the floor).

As usual the worst part of any project for me is waiting and as much as I’m glad the wall is finally done, watching plaster dry really isn’t the most exciting of things to do! On the morning of the second day after plastering you can already see that it’s starting to dry out nicely, so we knew that we wouldn’t have to wait too long.

After waiting another few days we could finally get out our paintbrushes. As always when we paint new plaster we applied a base coat first.

We already shared a post on how to paint newly plastered walls but basically we apply a couple of coats of watered down emulsion before applying the finishing coat. New plaster is really dry so it’s important not to skip this step.

It’s always amazing what a difference a bit of paint can make and the room definitely feels much more habitable again. We still need to add the architrave (we’re having it made to match the original), repair the floor and add the skirting, so we’re not quite done yet, but any job no matter how small ticked off our list is always a good feeling.

We still need to plan and build a decked area outside before summer to make this space really work, but it’s come a long way since the days of a dog pee stained carpet and dangerous gas fireplace!

At the moment some of the edges are still rough. Like on all other windows in the house we’ll be adding an architrave, so it didn’t make sense to spend time making the edges tidy if they’re going to be hidden anyway.

Have you ever attempted any plastering? What DIY job do you hate most? If you have any tips and advice on planning a decked area we’d love to hear them (we currently have no idea what we*re doing or where to start)!