Back from a few weeks away in Vegas to finish off the last coat of plaster. This coat is the 2nd one and the goal is to smooth out any imperfections, cover up the washers completely and then burnish the finish. I hit the room with a 2nd coat of Master of Plaster and then as it’s firming up I start making 2nd and 3rd passes with a squirt gun and a trowel. Here I moisten the plaster and then apply firm pressure on the plaster to smooth it out and try to work out any imperfections. I don’t quite get there, but it gets good enough.

Not being used to daily plastering, this burnishing kills my shoulder and chest. The next day when I wake up, my right side is completely shot and stiff. I think back to when I took a plastering class and the plastering said that his career beat up his body and he was recovering from a torn labrum in his shoulder. I feel like crap after just 1 session of plastering. Hard to imagine what this would do to my body 5 days a week.

With the plastering on, there’s nothing else to do there, so I move to some other work. Removing the remaining paint on the molding is one of the jobs. Here I apply more CitriStrip to the blotches that I haven’t been able to remove with the heater. It’s mostly on the door and window and is complicated by the heavy use of caulk on these pieces.

Back in the house, I start staining the molding. For the last bedroom, the molding was put up unstained, which was a bit of a hassle to deal with. I had to stain it in place and I was dripping stain and shellac on the newly lime-washed walls and on the painted ceiling. A lot of work required a small painter’s brush to get the stain to reach the edge of the wood. This time I’m staining the molding so I don’t have to deal with that. When I stained the first bedroom, I went with Minwax stains. After reading more about wood finishing, I’ve been playing with dyes and dyed shellac, but to keep this 2nd bedroom in line with the first, I go back to the Minwax. Before staining, I sand the wood with a random orbital sander which is supposed to hide scratch marks, but I don’t think it does. I can still see the marks from the sander so I think I’m using the tool wrong. To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen sanding make a piece of wood look better, especially when I buy the select pine pieces which already appear to be in good shape. I apply a base coat of 50-50 boiled linseed oil and turpentine to bring up the grain and smooth out the stain. Then use the English Chestnut with a tablespoon of Red Mahogany to stain the molding.

Last project is getting things in line for the bathroom in the cottage to get a facelift. I’m going to have a contractor do this work because I’d never be able to finish it in time for summer. Also, I want to have some more advanced things done such as tiling which I don’t think I’d be able to do a nice job on. Right now the bathroom is filled with the cheapest stuff you can find and has no historical value. It’s has a 50 dollar Home Depot vanity, a fiberglass shower with a piece of PVC for the curtain rod, cheapest vinyl floor, and painted wood paneling. I want to replace the paneling with shiplap and will keep the color blue. My first experiment is with some milk paint for the shiplap. It goes on chalky as I would expect and I wondering if it will have a problem in a moist bathroom environment.

Not sure if the milk paint is the answer so I’ll research some other paint options for the bathroom.