Living Room Walls

This was the condition of much of the plaster walls after we got the wallpaper down.

Buttons to screw the plaster back to the lathe.

Mesh tape. Stylish yellow so you know when it is properly covered in joint compound, I guess.

Patch with one layer of joint compound. I did this all over the place. When I was done, it looked like the walls were half patches. There were also rough spots and I needed to feather the patches with joint compound so the walls would appear smooth and level. So, I figured I'd skim coat the entire room. How hard could that be?

On the left: rough wall. On the right: skim coated wall.

Skim coating and the magical disappearance of a patch job.

Same area with one coat down and a second going on. It took several days (spread out over a couple weeks) to get both coats on. A third would have been nice, but . . . I didn't wanna.

This was such an improvement; if we wanted white walls, we might have gotten away with just leaving them as they were. After the skim coat, I just needed to sand the compound smooth. Here's where I made my biggest mistake. I did not contain the room because it seemed that the dust was falling to the floor (which actually still had the carpet down, so I didn't care). Actually, my entire house was being blanketed in a fine film of white powder. It even went upstairs and down into the basement. I ended cleaning every surface in the house, buying a shopvac, cleaning out the heating vents and blowing outside air through the house with a couple box fans. Oops.