diy plastering

just to add - some of it is just plaster which has come off, and also some is back to block, where the sand render has come off too...

You don't need something 'like' a bag of plaster, you need a bag of plaster! And don't buy it from a small handman's because they only usually stock small bags and they sell about 2 per year, meaning that it will set rock hard almost before you've finished mixing it - you may get 30 - 40 seconds if you're lucky.

A full sized bag from B&Q or a BM is about £3, look for 'multi-finish' and use that, but TBH, I don't know why you are bothering to plaster it at all, most kitchens over the past few years have had the units fitted to bare drylining, then tiled between lower and upper cupboards, leaving a strip across the top about 18 inches wide to be plastered

thanks for the info i'll buy a bag of plaster. what should i use for applying it?

Whens the last time you plastered Phillip? its £4.80 a bag

I think this is what youre looking for:

NT

I'd go to Wickes & buy a tub of ready mixed patching plaster. OK its £8.99 a £8.99 for a 6 litre tubs, but its dea easy to use for a beginer & sticks like s*1t to a blanket.

Multi-finish is fine for the surface, but to replace the missing scratch coat (render), you'll want bonding coat.

One coat plaster might be another option, but I've never used it.

I've used it once, Never again! It's *much* easier to use the two coat method with the correct materials. One coat is like the combined grout/adhesive for tiles, useless for either application.

================================== One-coat plaster (Wickes, B&Q etc.) is actually ideal for this kind of patching job despite reservations expressed by others. It has a long open time (up to an hour in favourable conditions), it's easily workable and can go on in quite thick layers if necessary. The finish doesn't compare too well with conventional two-coat plaster but that rarely matters. It is also cheaper as you only need to buy one bag instead of two bags - browning + finish - usually leaving two part bags left over.

Cic.

It's not if you buy 10 bags at a time

It's not too bad if you remember that "one coat" is just the name on the bag and bears no relation to how you use it. Use "one coat" for both the first and second application and it will do and can be trowelled flat. It won't win any competitions but, when painted, is fine. Also economic for small areas (one bag left half full rather than two left 3/4 full)..

I'll second that! For patching up, I've had excellent results with ready-mixed, and it's a much quicker and cleaner job - it's no fun when that heavy paper bag splits open and dumps a kilo of plaster dust all over the carpet :)

IIRC one-coat contains perlite, or some other air entrained mineral, which makes it more expensive but light enough not to slump in 50mm layers. As that type of mineral doesn't absorb water, the plaster dries relatively quickly too.

thanks i'll go get some ready mix from wickes. is it advisable to use dilute pva first on the area to be plastered?

On Tue, 4 Mar 2008 02:59:13 -0800 (PST), snipped-for-privacy@vaci.org head down on the keyboard, banged out this message:

Why does my Forte Free Agent NewsReader screw up money figures in peoples original posts. It always puts "= A3" infront of any figures ... except .... as now with me replying with the original post above, it appears normal ?

Mike P

Because lots of people are posting non-conformant news articles, and the different clients are handling the non-conformance better and worse.

Presumably it doesn't understand the

Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

in the header. That's not actually unreasonable as it's a MIME header which is not something News is specified to use. Clients which do Email and News probably will though, as well as some more advanced/recent news readers.

Agent seems to have generated an 8 bit message with the header

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

which it therefore presumably understands. This also isn't actually valid in a News header, although some systems will understand it. The danger with 8 bit encoding is that a transit system my well strip off the 8th bit and won't understand that it just corrupted the message. There probably aren't any non-8bit clean News connections anymore, but there used to be loads before NNTP/TCP became universal.

Agent, although it displayed the quoted-printable to you wrongly, seems to have understood how to convert it to 8 bit for the reply.

On 04 Mar 2008 15:35:04 GMT, snipped-for-privacy@cucumber.demon.co.uk (Andrew Gabriel) head down on the keyboard, banged out this message:

Well .... thats sorted that out then :-) Thanx

Mike P