I keep plugging away at the closet after I received confirmation from the floor guy that he’ll be able to fit me in sometime in the next two weeks. With the drywall patches in place, the next step is getting the patches covered over with some plaster. Besides the drywall, there’s also some exposed wood lath. I could do a lime plaster basecoat, but I don’t want to waste good lime plaster for the closet so I go with Structolite for the base coat. Structolite is a gypsum-based plaster that is still available in big box stores. I also have a large bag left over from a previous project. When I took my original lime plaster lesson, the plasterer instructing me said to use Structolite for a base coat because Master of Plaster specifies that and also doesn’t make a plaster basecoat. It wasn’t till I discovered Limeworks in Pennsylvania that I found a supplier of lime basecoat. Structolite doesn’t adhere directly to drywall so I need to put some PlasterWeld around the sides of the drywall where it meets the lath. Although some people do coat the entire piece of drywall and then use Structolite over that, I’m going to just use Structolite on the lath and then use Takcoat over the drywall.

With the plastering done, back to the wood work. The little shelf project that started out as just cleaning to now ready for sanding. Beforehand, I had stripped the paint, then washed the wood down with TSP followed by linseed oil soap. Now it’s sanding with 180 and 220 sandpaper to knockdown the raised grain from all the water I used. After I sand everything, I wipe down with turpentine and then with BLO mixed with turpentine at about a 40-60 ratio. I try using a little bit of wood dye to even out some of the discoloration, but I don’t think this wood was intended to be stained and is probably paint grade.

As I’m working on the wood, I get delivery of a bed for upstairs. I ordered this bed 6 months ago from a site that brokers sales with Amish woodworkers. It was a little pricy but I wanted to support American craftspeople instead of just getting something made overseas.

For the closet shelf, now that the stain is all dry, it’s on to finishing. After some light sanding, I go with a coat of shellac to start things off. Of course after applying the shellac there’s some lap marks that I need to work out with sanding and rubbing with alcohol. This then leads to parts of the wood that no longer absorb shellac when I try a second coat. Shellac is so forgiving, but is also so tricky to get correct.

After I’m done struggling with the shellac, I decide to give a new varnish a shot since this piece of wood isn’t crucial to anything. I bought some Tried and True varnishes and haven’t used them before. These varnishes are linseed oil based and I have two different types. I start with their varnish oil and do two coats of that. After those cure, I will finish with the original which has beeswax mixed in so that needs to go on last.

Back in the closet, the Structolite is dry so I cover the rest of the patch with a coat of Takcoat. Takcoat is designed to go right on top of drywall without any additional adhesive and I use that to start leveling out the drywall patches to the plaster walls. After that is done, I do a final stripping of the wood by scrubbing down with TSP followed by linseed oil soap. After the wood dries, I sand things down a little and apply the BLO/turpentine mixture. The BLO will take a while to dry so no staining until next weekend.

There are two smaller holes in the plaster at the top of the closet near the ceiling. One hole is partially hidden behind the chimney so I don’t worry about that for now, but the other hole is more visible so I plug that up. Like the lower hole this one is also missing a stud so I sister in a new piece of wood and secure that with braces. After the braces are secured, I cut a piece of drywall and fill in the gaps around the lath with a basecoat of Structolite.