Painting Tips

Cracks in plaster ceiling & walls

How to resurface plaster

In this post I will talk about how to resurface plaster. Take a look at the photo to the left showing all of the cracks in the plaster.

The first thing we did was remove any loose pieces of plaster and vacuum to get as much of the plaster dust as possible.

Then we primed all areas of the plaster wit a water based – fast drying – sealer primer.

We did this to seal up the walls and ceiling since the knee-wall was made of drywall and not plaster.  The paper was torn on the sheetrock so sealing it with the primer keeps the paper from bubbling up under the new plaster.

Some areas also had some wallpaper that we were not able to remove so the primer keeps this from bubbling or peeling under the new plaster.

Fiberglass mesh

Fiberglass mesh over cracks in plaster

After the entire area was primed/sealed we covered all of the walls and the ceiling with a fiberglass mesh to keep the cracks from coming back.

This mesh gets embedded in the new plaster and helps to prevent the cracks from coming back after the repair is complete.

First coat of durabond over cracks:

First coat of plaster over the cracks

The first coat was just a coat of durabond to cover the cracks and fill in any gaps or holes.

Durabond is kind of a plaster mix but dries much harder & quicker than plaster.

We always like to use it as a base coat to fill the cracks because of it’s strength and bonding qualities.

You have to work very neatly with it because it dries fast and hard. You can’t sand it much once it has hardened so you want to keep it clean.

Second coat of plaster:

First coat of plaster

This photo shows the second coat. which is really the base coat of plaster.

Once this coat dries we lightly scrape the lat marks (lines left by taping knife.) out of the plaster and clean up the corners with a 2″ taping knife to get the plaster ready for the next coat.

Final coat of plaster

Final coat of plaster

This is the wall after the final coat of plaster.

We will still clean it up a bit before priming such as the areas where the plaster meets the wood trim and in corners & coves.

Coves are the areas where the ceiling meets the wall. or the horizontal corners.

The bump out in the wall on the right is a brick chimney that we covered with plaster.

So now we are ready to prime all of the new plaster to seal it up and prepare it for finish paint.

To help recreate the old world look we wanted the new plaster to have brush marks instead of roller marks like traditional methods of painting leave.

Rollers leave kind of an orange peel effect so what we did was prime the plaster using a roller and covering about 5′ = 5′ sections at a time.

Then I would set down the roller and grab my 4′ paint brush and went over the area that I had just rolled.

Then I would prime the next section with the roller and brush it out. Leaving brush marks with even consistent strokes.

We repeated this technique with each of the two finish coats as well.

Each time I would brush in a different direction which left a cool cross hatch pattern in the paint.

Brush Marks:

Brush marks in wet paint.

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