Plaster Recipe ...

Today I will share with you, my dear readers, a secret, a secret recipe, which you are welcome to replicate, if you so desire.

Granted, this post is a memo to myself, and intended to carve in stone (or bits and bytes) the recipe for the plaster mix we used throughout the house, just in case we lose the paper snippet on which it is inscribed right now.

Gunk Haus Plaster Mix:

• 6 pints hydrated S lime
• 6 pints USG Diamond Veneer Finish Plaster
• 3 tablespoons Borax (for retarding; this gives you ample work time, maybe even too much)
• 3 teaspoons pigment
• 12 cups cold water
  

Mix pigment and Borax with a little hot water until it's dissolved, and add to the rest of the water. Sift in lime and mix. Sift in plaster and mix until you get a nice thick paste, which should hold its shape. This amount will cover somewhere upwards of 50 square feet.

Plastering was on the forefront again today. The ceiling in the main entrance was the only surface that hadn't been plastered yet.

But I didn't stop there. In case I never mentioned it: I am lazy. Shocking, I know, but that's how it is. So in the beginning of my plastering career I had tried to cut corners, speed things up, save some time, and so I didn't tape the seams in the ADA bathroom. Big surprise: after a some time the plaster started cracking at the seams. Shocking!!!

I had tried a quickfix, but it only made matters (look) worse. So right now I am replastering the ADA bathroom.

Dirk