Hi I'm Craig Phillips, and today I want to show you how you can do your very own patch
plaster work.
The tools and materials you are going to require are, a small paintbrush with some premixed
adhesive, a filling knife, plastering trwol, a hawk and some premixed plaster.
When you are doing repairs on very old houses you might come accross a thing called lathin
plaster, and that is where you get quite vunerable breaks in the wall like this.
The nature of it is it has got two studs coming down here, then you have got the lathe witch
is the small battons which bridge across.
They are nailed in.
And then of course its all rendered or plastered over with a thing called wattle daub.
What that is is a general mixture of various different local materials, from horse hair,
to lime putty.
It is all mixed together, even clay in there, and it is spread accross it.
That was fine hundreds of years ago but it is starting to break away and get brittle
now.
To do a repair you must get yourself a scraping knife and break away any of the loose areas
off here top start with.
You have to be quite delicate when you are doing this because the more you take away
the moer loose it starts to become and the more you are exposing the little lathes of
wood, and they are starting to bounce a little bit aswell.
So once you have cleared away all of the loose areas, get your paintbrush and apply this
premixed sealant over there.
This is like a bonding agent, and what that will do is absorb into all the loose areas
and stiffen it up a little bit.
Of course it will help our new plaster key to that.
Once you have covered the area, leave it for a couple of minutes to start to dry.
Once it is tacky you can then apply the plaster.
Now that has had a couple of minutes and it is more or less touch dry, it is ready to
apply your plaster.
I'm going to get my small trowl and my hauk, I have got my lightweight plaster.
I'm going to start by getting the end of the hawk and a good fair bit on the trauwl itself.
Now of course I don't want it to fall inbetween all of the slats there, I just want it to
grab alomgside it and hide it.
I am going to put alot more on than we actually need at this point.
Shak ethe trauwl a fraction, that helps it get inbetween all the little gaps in there
and avoids any air pockets.
Again, at this point you don't have to worry about what it looks like, you have just got
to concentrate on getting enough material in the gaps.
Once you have applied enough on and it is standing quite proud from the actual wall
surface.
so I am going to place the trauwl over the center of it and I am going to just very slowly
slide it up and down a fraction.
What that does is just cut away a little bit of the top surface of it thats not required.
Making sure your trauwl is quite clean to do the opposite side.
By cutting it away like that you can already see that it is starting to make it flush with
the actual existing surface of the wall.
You don't have to worry about it being smooth at this point, just getting the right amount
on.
Once this is dried off you can get a tiny bit of a thin coat more and leave it to fully
dry, until the following day we can sand it down and it is ready to paint or wallpaper.
Now your patch plaster work is dry it is ready to be sanded down.
Now sandpaper comes in different grades, the lower the grade is the more course the sandpaper
is.
So you start off with a courser one then you work your way down to a more finer one to
get a nice smooth finish.
Now if you have got a lot of areas that needed patch plastering, you are going to have to
sand a lot of areas down.
It is worth investing in a good electrical sander, I find these palm sanders perfect
for rooms this size.
If you are planning any DIY tasks in the near future, you may need a little bit of advice
on tools or some top DIY tips.
Well visit silverlinetools.com