Plaster Adventure

Although the "shell" of the cabin is done, the interior finishing work is not.  Of all the rooms, the living room was most complete.  The brick floor was laid by Doug Ring over 15 years ago and the windows have been in for a long time as well.  The adobe walls have been in various states of rough coat plaster for close to a decade; some parts of the room had no rough coat at all.  The picture below shows an area with some of my father's "creative" rough coat.  The burnt adobes on the lower portion of the wall will be left as is - perhaps sealed for more color in the future.  

Before plastering

After some research and suggestions from my sister, I decided to apply a natural clay plaster to the living room walls.  My sister had used American Clay to plaster her finished basement and I really liked the look.  I had my heart set on the 'Porcelina' finish, which is supposed to be the most difficult to apply, but it was soooo beautiful.  To prepare for the plastering, my contractor, Kenny Sutton, kindly and patiently applied a rough coat of mud over the bare adobes and my Dad's creative rough coat experiments.  This past June, my sister, nephew, husband and I met at the site with the goal of finishing the plaster, and the room.

The first coat of clay is an off-white color - a big difference from the mud rough coat.  The picture below shows us plastering away.  It wasn't a difficult process - just a series of movements that are new.  The hardest part was keeping the coat thin (only credit-card thickness) because our mud coat was a little too sandy.

First clay coat

Below we are adding the final coat (the darker color). This coat was supposed to be even thinner than the first, (business card thickness) but we weren't too careful about that.  This coat went up quickly because the first clay coat was so much smoother than the mud coat.  Because the photo shows the plaster wet, you can't tell what it looks like finished, but trust me, it's beautiful!  The overall look is similar to Venetian plaster.  The walls look like velvet and they are soft to the touch.  The plaster made a huge difference in the atmosphere of the room - the color is a very soothing grey/beige called Chacolatte.

Final clay coat

We managed to avoid any major aches or pains from the repetitive movements and high reaches, but we couldn't avoid the blisters.  I thought it was great that my husband and I had matching blisters - how romantic is that?