This weekend is the last plaster coat on the walls. The second coat was wrapped up last weekend and it’s about 90% there, but still a little bit of lumpiness/roughness. I don’t need to make this coat perfect since it will be covered by wallpaper, but I do want to make it as level as possible before putting on the paper. Since I don’t want a glassy surface I won’t use 100% of the extra fine plaster but at the same time the standard grain is a little too coarse. I want to try and get the most of spread out of the plaster so I opt to do a mix of extra fine and fine along with a little extra water. I play it by ear with the mixture and try to spread as thin as possible to smooth out any minor imperfections. After I get the coat on, I wet things down with a sponge and then do some burnishing with a wet trowel. I don’t go too crazy with the burnishing but just enough to get a pretty smooth surface.

After the plaster is done and burnished, back to the woodwork. I focus on the baseboards to get them all ready for finishing. I do any remaining applications of stripper along with scrubbing that off and washing it down with a solvent. Then I do another wash of TSP to strip off more sludge. I start washing down with BLO soap after that. The wood’s looking pretty good and even if there is some white haze I think I got it as clean as I can. Next weekend I’ll sand it down and put on a coat of turpentine followed by BLO.

I don’t get to the window and door moldings, but in preparation for their final stripping, I mix up some wood epoxy to fill in a notch that was cut in to have a lock on the door. I mash the epoxy and let that set. Next week I’ll sand it down to match the contours of the molding.

Last up is stripping the old gas pipe and sealing it to prevent rust. I use some rust removal gel and then coat the pipe with Floetrol. I read that Floetrol is a good option to give a clear coat while also preventing rust. That will let me determine if I want to keep the pipe natural or coat it with paint.