Scrubbing Away

Cleaned wall.

I continue making my way through removing the blue calcimine from the plaster in the bedroom. All of the main blotches of paint are off, so this is some final washes to get the chalky residue off. I do a scrub with water, dish detergent and some TSP. I start with a sponge and then go over it with a Brillo pad. After scrubbing the wall, I then swap out with a bucket of clean water and sponge that down. After a few rinses I squeegee off the water and then do a final wipe down with a paper towel. That gets the wall pretty clean where there’s not a lot of chalky residue.

Another cleaned wall.

Outside of the plaster I rip out a few drywall repairs that were made when I had the HVAC done. The original HVAC cut the studs which I don’t think was a smart move so for these repairs I’ll follow what I did with the bathroom where I’m going to replace the missing stud portion and attach them with braces. I’ll then reattach lath and put in plaster patches. I also will try to move the outlet over to attach to the stud since the electiricans I hired just attached the boxes to the lath and they are extremely loose.

Hole from the old HVAC where they cut out a stud in addition to the lath.

Most of the woodwork in the room has been stripped, but there’s still some paint that needs another pass. As the plaster finishes up I resume stripping the remaining paint from the woodwork so I will be able to start prepping the wood as I apply the new plaster. Also there’s a gas line in the room that is covered in paint that working on.

First pass of stripping paint from the gas line.

Also on the woodwork end, I apply CitriStrip to the other side of the closet door to remove the last of the paint on that side. I get the same blotching I got with the other side of the door with this treatment. I tried using Bar Keepers friend to reduce the blotching since I saw someone online mention this. It works OK but doesn’t fully remove the blotching but I’ll see how it looks when I revisit a week later since maybe the wood is still wet from the cleaning.

CitriStrip with the blotching.

Scraping off.

Stripped door with blotching.

After applying some Bar Keepers friend. Didn’t really remove the blotching.