Plaster, plaster everywhere

More plastering this week.  I have underestimated the amount of time that it takes to get the scratch coat on - he works really hard, but even so by the end of the day there is still so much left.  The signs of progress are most welcome - at last I feel that the house is going back together.  There is a real delight in seeing a uniform covering over walls and ceilings where there used to be damp patches, peeling wallpaper and, in the case of the bedroom ceilings, actual holes with real daylight.

A job next week will be to remove the plaster in the bathroom - at least there is a benefit to having a very small bathroom! - and this should be the last significant amount of plaster to be removed, apart from the kitchen ceiling which I think is doomed.

Having failed to publish this at the weekend, I can add that we have now removed the plaster from half of an internal wall in the kitchen-to-be.  This has had the wonderful effect of revealing the quoins which formed the corner of the original building; in the photo (right) this structural wall extends to the left and also goes directly away from the camera where it forms the front left corner of the house.  The bottom stone is the plinth which stands proud by about 3 cm, in exactly the same way as the wall at the front. 


Also, further along the same wall there is squared limestone (left) which matches the front wall of the house.  All this proves that this thick internal wall along the centre of the house was originally an exterior wall, when the building was first erected as a school, I understand (in 1834).






I have also found that another external wall, which is lined with brick, was originally just painted white on the inside, not plastered.  You can see where the builders have created a pattern by chipping the paint to provide a key before plastering.  Presumably this was the cheaper surface finish on the wall when the building was a school.