Lime Plaster and Grouting

It seems a very long time ago that I last used any lime mortar.  It was certainly before the winter set in, but I suppose it was perhaps even September last year.  Well, today I was at it with a vengeance, as I tried my hand at lime plastering for the first time.  It's all very well looking at someone else doing it, and talking about it, but there's nothing like actually doing it yourself, on your own.  There's no-one to blame if it goes wrong, and there's not even anyone to ask for help.  The trouble with plastering generally, but especially lime plastering, is that it's so messy.  If ever I have complained about plasterers being messy, I apologise, as I have found out for myself that whatever you do with plaster, some gets on the (wrong) walls, the floor, all the tools, the ladder especially and of course oneself.

The task was to plaster the old wall which forms part of the rebuilt extension.  It's the wall which forms part of the kitchen and the old brick extension was built outside, so what once was an exterior wall became an internal wall (see photo left).  Apart from this wall, the entire extension is in modern materials but with lime in the pointing to give that softer look.  When we demolished the old extension, I removed all the old plaster (lime and modern pink) on this wall and of course found some lovely Cotswold stone underneath; well, it's coursed rubble, not squared but it's still lovely.  I did contemplate keeping the stone visible but there were several reasons not to.  Firstly, there used to be a hatchway in the wall which I removed and bricked up about a year ago: I had no thought of having an unplastered wall so the bricks seemed a good idea at the time, hence the plastered square in the centre of the wall in the above photo.  I think we plastered it as I thought we'd keep the old plaster (never thought it would come off so easily!).  I don't think I ever mentioned this hatch on this blog, so here's another picture, from the kitchen side (right), before we did the kitchen last June.  The wall is almost 18 inches thick, so it used 70-something bricks going right through to the extension side. 

Secondly, we fitted T-pieces to the water and heating pipes (which you can see in the pictures) to take them through the wall in preparation for the extension.  So these all come out on the extension side, at about a metre up as you can see in the photos.  I've forgotten why they weren't at floor level, which would have been a better idea!  Possibly the second fix plumbing was done after the kitchen fit?  I love hindsight.


Anyway, I managed to do the haired scratch coat on about half of the wall today before getting tired - it is tough on your right arm.  This was two mixes, which I think was not bad considering the spread and his mate used to do five in a day, but I was on my own and my grandson came to see us.  (No further excuse needed!)

I've also been grouting the black limestone floor, which is tedious and, if you're not careful, very hard on your knees; last time (in June) I got housemaid's knee!  So, I've been doing that job in small goes and have now done about 80% of the extension floor, so I'm almost there.  Left, you can see some gaps unfilled, but the rest of the floor is done in the same yellow mortar as can be seen near the camera. I should point out (just in case you've not realized) that the floor and the wall are in the same room, so cleaning up all waste mortar soon after it is dropped is essential to avoid staining on the limestone.  Next time I'll mention my technique for cleaning lime mortar off black limestone (exciting stuff - I must have become a nerd).