Howdy Folks, Kirk, and Jay here, with Kirk Giordano plastering, my son Dan next to me also we're
gonna show you guys today is a real common thing. What they've done is they've completed their attic
and they put wood up there so you could walk on but they had a few issues if you're gonna do an
attic guys, go with tongue-and-groove usual inch and 1/8 and groove it right stagger it everything.
Don't hammer in your nails or this will happen. Use screws even a pneumatic gun with a piston
can sometimes do this, anyway what we're gonna do today is. They have called me and said, gee, how much of
this we got to take off? and I thought by looking at it when all the furniture was in here I could
see that we'd have to take off, generally what I do I've taken off about 50 ceilings in my time
Jay is taking off about 10 or so and Dan's gonna help on this. one what we try to do is we
look for the natural breaks now this ceiling is separated up good oh I'd say a good eight inches
six inches, and now what I'm hoping is that they don't have a busted stud in here if the stud is
busted, I've only seen that once, we're prepared to fix that if we need to wire it we're prepared
to fix that also, but what we like to do is well number one we bring in the staging and we covered
the floor I got brand new tarps here guys because it got pretty floors. We set up all our staging,
our staging has cardboard underneath the feet so we don't mark up the hardwood floors, we even cover
the window where we bring the plank in, open all those windows cover everything here because guys
there is a lot of dust when you do stuff like this a lot of dust, anyhow getting back to how much
to take off that's the question, everybody asked and I don't usually know until I start the demo
work? How much but what I'll do is I'll usually go with what I see now I can see it goes about
right here this is a natural in the lath, now generally, I've already marked these out here's
where I think studs are studs are here, and then we have timber lath, timber lath it's going
this way now timber lath, what's that? That's the wood lath, that after you you're your stud house
is done, then you put your timber lath and in In the old days, the stucco would adhere through that
timber lath by mushrooming on the top, so what we're gonna do is I'm gonna take my knife and
score everything, so I want to let me finish what I started. I think we'll take it here right by
here and I think I can see the buckle here, so what we want to do is score it. We'll score it
to here, come in here we don't have to take, there's no rules that say we got to take a straight line
guys. What we do is we follow the natural buckles so here's one, here and then, I figure about right
up to here. right there and take it to the natural line right here. Now, like I get asked this a lot
of times people say, Kirk, how come you always use a razor knife? What I generally do is I
got about four razor knives on me with brand new blades. What we do is, we call it scoring we'll
take a knife and we'll score it. We just go over and over like, so, to start off. I'll start off by putting just a
quarter-inch blade and use both hands guys, and you score it go like that, then after you get more
you keep going up, you keep extending the blade and pretty soon you've scored it. What does that
mean? That when I remove this, it'll stop at this the section here, now for the sake of what folks have
asked me on a few of our other videos. They say how come you don't use a grinder? a grinder makes
a lot of dust! Fortunately here we've covered the access there we've covered the access, here this
is dusty work guys whether or not you're using a grinder a saw or a razor knife. Here's what I
do, when I do use a grinder guys this is a masonry blade it is about a quarter-inch thick this is for
metal it's only an eighth inch thick, what I'll generally do sometimes is I'll take it and just
score it lightly, and sometimes I'll double score it with my other, if you go too deep you cut the
stud you don't want to do that. Anyway, so what What we're gonna do right now is we're gonna score
everything and once we score everything then we'll show you how to remove it. Okay guys what
I've decided is, we're going to pull this off by hand if we pull this the whole thing might fall
and that's just the nature of doing this stuff. It happens all the time like two layers, what a drag
they've worked on this quite a few times before oh, they got fiber mesh, so that's a ceiling over a ceiling!
you never know what you're going to encounter. Okay, guys a new strategy when you're doing this stuff you improvise all day long, trying to cut through that mesh and we pull down.
I have fiber mesh tape over the original ceiling then they put another one, Okay guys let me show
you where we're at now we removed everything where we're gonna remove. I'll tell you guys when you
do this stuff you never know what could happen. the the only thing holding all this up, was the huge
fixture frame about a foot that was holding all this up when we light when we took that down the
the whole thing fell, we all had to get up here and hold it and nothing, we haven't seen or nothing
we can't handle, what they have here is it's been snowing on us there's the insulation comes through
this crack as we clean out our keys so a lot of things we encounter what we're doing now is Jays
keep cleaning some of these keys and what I'm doing is I'm applying a bonding agent.
the reason I'm applying this bonding agent is the timber lath is dusty and my new plaster won't
adhere to dust so that's probably going to take us about another hour and a half, two hours I'm also
going to throw some wire on here. You say, why are you gonna throw some wire on there Kirk? When you
have perfect keys because this the ceiling joist is here they're fine but what they have on on this
on the roof over here or the bedroom above if somebody's doing jumping jacks up there, what
could happen is this can loosen up again it's already did it twice and I see right here where
other people patched things there's been a lot of stuff here so I don't want to take any chances. I
brought mesh for this particular reason, in case I opened it and I saw situations, that we might have
to improvise so I'm going to put some mesh here but we're still doing everything that we would
do even if we didn't have mesh and the mesh again is only for I don't know what they did when they
did the floor if they keyed in everything with the flooring, there's a way to do that, and if
they didn't do it the particular way you should. I'm just going to use the mesh as a precaution
so the next time you see us we will have that mesh screwed on I don't want to make this too
long for you and we'll show you how we plaster it.
Okay guys no I said I was gonna not show you this part but this light here is the reason this the whole thing came off, that when they pushed it in
they pushed everything and it loosened it all. so what we're going to do is we're just going
to put three pieces of rib mesh here. By the the way Dan says, "dad, don't they make grinders that
have little vacuums so that what we were doing catches all the dust? Yes. they do. and I've
even followed grinders with a shop vac to hold it we resorted to the old fashioned method and
used our knives to pull most of to score most of this anyhow guy, when you see us next we will be
applying that first coat. Okay guys doing the mud part now the fun part basically using a
20-minute mud, they make 20 40 60 80 and 5 but being about oh I'd say 90 degrees outside and
inside here is about 105, 5-minute mud as fast as they bring it to me it would set, so what I'm
doing is I'm putting my first coat on I always like to do my perimeters first, by the way
guys when you mix this mud up the first couple coats it doesn't matter if there's a little bit
of crap in it, but when you go to do the very top coat you better have that mud mix very well. No
clumps otherwise the clumps will show you see how I'm kind of I'm pulling it and then pushing
it into the groove, pulling it pushing it into the groove, here, boom, that's I'm getting my key first.
after I get the entire perimeter of the key then I'll do the inside. By the time I'm doing the
inside the outside will be wet or dry and then I can come back finish it up - another thing - folks
that we pulled this off there are three coats of stucco here . I mean you see the key this is
the first one that's the key, it went up to the ceiling there are three-four coats you don't need
to keep putting more and more coats guys, sometimes you just got to bite the bullet, and say okay it's
time to tear it off and start fresh, so that's what they should have done a while back instead
of more and more coats because, when I originally came here there was a lot of little bitty kids
running around here if you put too much on guess what could happen? it could just fall off on you
or your kids or you know what that. You just never know what you're gonna find when you open these
ceiling up, once I opened a ceiling in found a wad $100 bills, just kidding guys. I wish, anyhow you see
where we're going with this Dan's actually on the camera there. Jay is mixing it Jay says we'll all
help you dad. I said man just bring me the mud as fast as you can, mix it, and let me slam this out.
so when he gets caught up then he'll be helping me. All right guys, we are almost wrapped up as far
as this scratch coat goes, I initially brought 20 bags this was a small well between 6 & 8 bags but
let's bring 20 just in case. I'm already at about 13 bags and this is just for the scratch coat. So
Jay is gonna go get more bags you never know. guys usually, we bring way more than enough, and for my
buddy, Apache, who says Kirk, I tried doing that stuff and I ended up calling a professional to
finish it, man, we all got our strong points as I was telling my buddy Apache on an email. I tried
to fix a Bosch dishwasher couldn't do it spent, oh, about ten hours, bought all kinds of parts a total
of five separate days and I finally just called a professional it took him an hour, he fixed it
best 200 bucks ever spent, so Apache, if you're watching this man, we all got our strong points.
In fact, Dan, was gonna come up here and help me spread this, he's used to spreading walls, so maybe on
the next coat, I can get him to come up here and spread this. Apache, so you can see that takes a lot of practice and Dan says, I think I can do it. But he's never done a ceiling before if you've
never done a ceiling before, you will get covered in plaster, it will go down your face, down your neck, you'll
be, it'll go in your ears everywhere, this does take a lot of practice. Guys any way I'm almost
wrapped up then we are gonna take a long lunch. Notice I'm working on staging but I also got to
a watch, where you're walking. If you think you're gonna try to do this kind of stuff off ladders,
good luck guys, I've tried it many many times you can't do it off ladders. You can try, but you'll take
a job and increase the amount of time by five. Anyway, this is the scratch coat I'm gonna turn
around and while Jay is gone. Dan is gonna keep mixing, I'm gonna keep going and hopefully, we'll
just, by the time he gets back, I'll be almost done. Okay, guys, we are putting this second coat on now
a lot easier to put a second coat on guys Dan is gonna be mixing for us. Cool beans,
Dan, come back clean it up
oh, it's about 105 in here, go blam, no?
Okay guys we are getting there, it's mighty hot up here you could see where this is, Dan says how you
gonna get it smooth like those other guys? That's easy, each coat I put on gets harder and harder.
I'll give you an example let's see it all right. getting ready to put the final scoops on right
here it's pretty hard you take it on edge now. Almost on, in a lot of elbow grease, this takes
a bit of muscle, but you just that's how you get it smooth guys, for example again, say I'm putting this
I'm trying to fill this out here because we're somewhat hollow, what I'll do is I'll take
it and each time clean it yeah clean this here and every time you put on a swipe go back over it. What
I like to swim pool trowel is for interiors they work really well, the square trowels leave
joints. I'll share something much more difficult taking it into the radius. When we take it into the
radius. Okay we're gonna this takes a little bit of finesse, you put it on and then you get that radius
put it on get the radio there then you just go back over and get the radius, don't push too hard
right here otherwise we have a big indentation it's bad enough, we're about an inch and a
half thick there. Let's take it you kind of get the feel for it and the more and more you go
over this stuff or this plaster the more you get the feel of how much more you need to put
on. Here or how much you need to take off we're getting to the end of the ceiling now. I figure
by another half, a bucket, and I will have this licked, so what I'm gonna do guys finish it off
and when I'm done with the entire ceiling. I'll show you how it's done this is gonna
take a good another hour and then I'll have it licked. Okay, guys I'll show you a little technique, since
we've gone this far. See where all these lines are with this particular plaster, if you just
take your trowel on edge, I'm taking it on edge guys like this. Now on edge and you just cut it
or we call scraping it. you can get everything out if you need some mud somewhere, say like
here, I still have this little bit here I can put it here, and go sideways I'll show you one more
way to do it. This way here takes a lot of elbow grease, but technically I'm done as
far as spreading mud.
What I did is ask Jay, mix up a little bit of soup, that just means
some new fresh stuff the ceiling is hard but not completely it's still workable here's another way,
here's the way I prefer it because it actually takes less muscle a little bit more skill. Okay, I'll take it and I'll just go over one more time. I'll bring it back kind of like, what
I did over there. I'll take it, Okay, like say where the light is, I'll take it here and come
back down. All I'm doing now is getting the last bit of imperfection out. Earlier, I was gritting
my teeth, to get it all out, but if you use some fresh stuff, now you're talking about
skill rather than muscle. So anyhow guys my name is Kirk, I am with Kirk Giordano plastering. This parts done.
As usual guys, Jayson, Dan and I thank you for watching, and we'll see you guys on the next one.