Hello alt.home.repairers,
The darling wife's de-papering of the den of our 100-year-old house has revealed why there was paper up in the first place: crumbly walls. I've got several 12" holes down to the lath, and the whole thing needs a fresh skim-coat before paint will look decent.
So, I've figured out that I need something like structolite or gyspolite as a base-coat for the deep holes, and then something like Diamond finish coat (or Uni-Kal or X-KALibur, etc) over that. Preferably, I'll apply a bonder (plasterweld or USG pink or Durex plasterbond) to old plaster before skim-coating, and expanded metal lath over the existing lath to enhance the keying for the base coat.
Sounds great, but I haven't been able to find ANY or these things at the 5 hardware and big box shops I've been to. At most of these places, they stare at me like I'm a freak and then steer me to the Durabond 20/60/90 and tell me to use that for my basecoat and regular spackle for the top coat. Sounds a bit dodgy.
I'm in Chicago. Where can I buy the right stuff?
Thanks, TF1
PS: I realize that plastering ain't trivial, but I'm going to give it a try. My back-up plan is to lay 1/4 drywall over all the wals, so there ain't much harm in giving this a try first. I