Wife was out shopping yesterday and came home with a tub of Polyfilla "finishing skim" so I guess the problem of how to deal with the "blown" plaster is solved. Hope it works as easily as it says.
Now, I had striped most of the paint from the banisters but the bottom of the Newel post still had a touch of paint on it so decided as I had such fun (FSVO) with the heat gun yesterday would fire that up and whip off the rest of the paint. Unfortunately due to the proximity of the carpet to the bottom of the Newel post, some Nylon in the make up of the carpet[1] and inattention on my part managed to melt/scorch a piece of the carpet just as well we are planning to replace same. Rug at the bottom of the stairs in the mean time.
[1] A wool/Nylon mix, as this is(was) a very heavy traffic area so we perceived a need for a very hard wearing carpet. Now the boys are older and more sensible we don't need to 'armour' everything so much. In actuality the carpet was a bit of overkill as the boys weren't that 'rough'. But as it looked fine anyway (just a tad expensive) we kept it perhaps a little (FSVO) longer than strictly necessary. Boys are 21 and 18 now. 18 year old has special needs but physically is a strong giant (even if he can't keep effort up long due to his lungs not working properly) so we still have to watch for him, but he tends (now) to be a bit less boisterous.