You see, we haven't touched the house in months. Towards the end of the summer, we made significant progress on the yard, but once Fall settled in, and the busy season arrived for work, home improvement came to a grinding halt.
"Why," you ask.
Well, the biggest issue is I cannot get the plaster smooth. You may remember last spring, I started the office/guest room make over. That included removing an unnecessary doorway (thus adding some very valuable wall space). Unfortunately, repairing such a large section of plaster has proved to be beyond my skill set.
Now, I'm working on figuring out how to fix it. Should I just keep adding plaster, working further and further out? Should I hire help? Ugh. What to do...
And of course, we have a party planned in a few weeks, so I now have a deadline. Naturally, I have moved the furniture back into the room, and started using it. Frequently. Ugh.
I don't quite have an answer to your question about getting the plaster smooth, but I have some thoughts that might help. I've been thinking a lot about a similar issue that we have - ugly texture on our drywall. From what I've read various places online and in books, it looks to me like it takes skill and time to skim coat and make it look nice and smooth, whether we're talking plaster or drywall compound. People say that textures hide imperfections though, so I'm thinking that if I ever do attempt to skim coat our walls, I'll have to put a new (better than what is there now) texture on it because I'll never be able to get it perfectly flat and smooth. I think this method from DIY Diva might work for me: http://diydiva.net/2010/01/drywall-101-using-joint-compount-for-a-stucco-wall-finish-no-sanding-required/
ReplyDeleteOh and also they say paints with less sheen (flat or eggshell) also hide imperfections better.
I hope it helps! I feel your pain.