"William Brown" wrote in message
...
I agree with everything here except use of tape. Get a bag of perlited
gypsum plaster (known to the old timers as brown coat) and use that for
your first coats (unfortunately, it usually comes in very large bags).

Interesting....some of the old plaster in my home was darker near the lath
than at the surface. Maybe that was the brown coat you're referring to.


Get some finishing plaster, often called patching plaster, and use that
for your final coats. The final coat should be about as thick as very
thick paint, and it is pretty easy to get that smooth to the point where
little sanding is needed. If, in the course of getting down to solid
plaster, you end up with large areas you will have to do, I would
suggest finding a real plasterer, as there is a lot of talent involved
in doing larger areas, and corners. Around here decorators usually seem
to know someone who can do real plastering, although there are fewer and
fewer of them left.

True. There used to be a small group of architects in my office building.
One of them was involved with redesigning a local office building lobby, and
it required some fancy texture plastering. Because they couldn't find anyone
local (Rochester NY), they ended up hiring a bunch of guys from Florence,
Italy. They were just slightly more expensive than people from the NYC area.