A few days ago I showed you the fun we were having with asbestos plaster…
Unfortunately those were not the only plaster “features” we had that I wanted to get rid of to try and give our house a more sleek modern finish.
They were however the easy ones… because apart from the dent in our wallets, we didn’t actually have to put any work ourselves into getting rid of them.
The rest of the plaster in our house however… not so quick and easy to get rid of…
Yep, it’s slow going for sure and for days it feels like we haven’t been getting anywhere.
But today, thankfully I can start to see our tracks…
The first plaster project I’ll show you was a game of “see how many minutes it takes for your father to turn your house white while your back is turned…”
The answer to the game is not many!
Dad, in a spurt of enthusiasm last week, took to the wall behind our fireplace with a belt sander in order to sand the wall to a smooth finish.
1 broken sander, a billion sanding belts, a VERY white house, some terse words, an asbestos scare, some more terse words and many hours cleaning up later and we have a smooth(ish) wall. All it needs now (I hope) is a skim coat from the plasterer when he comes on Wednesday and it will be ready to rock and roll some paint.
The wall showing the before and after sanding…
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I’m sure you can imagine how much mess all that plaster made of my house! Especially since I hadn’t taken the curtains down, removed the lounge suite we were given, covered the floors and taped off the rest of the house yet before Dad went ahead and started sanding without me there.
Yes seriously! Now you know why there were some terse words…
I am so grateful to Dad for helping me on this journey, because I in no way could do this without his help, but at that precise moment I was not.best.pleased!
Then to find out after my house got completely covered in white dust that the wall could actually be made from asbestos… well… frazzled doesn’t even begin to cover it!
But the great news is that it tested negative for asbestos. And with the exception of the ceilings and windows the clean up is pretty much done. I know I will look at that wall and enjoy it’s smoothness for many years to come, while chuckling quietly to myself about it’s rocky journey!
A photo of after we did the majority of the clean up….
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The next project of mass destruction was my master bedroom ceiling…
I knew I wasn’t keen on the plaster ceiling splatters throughout when we bought the house, however I just assumed that they were something I would be stuck with and that I’d just make do with them. Then we started to find out just how fragile and hard to clean they were and I started to hate them even more.
One afternoon when I was taking the curtains down in our bedroom I rubbed my finger over the ceiling lightly to have an investigate the plaster more closely and much to my surprise my finger totally cleared a line in the plaster right back to the board.
Ummm ooops.
I knew it seemed to be all showering down on top of me when I was vaccuuming cobwebs out of the corners, but I kinda wasn’t expecting it to come off THAT easily. So because it now looked completely stupid with this big line in the plaster, my to-do list kind of grew with the job of stripping off the plaster in the ceilings before we move in.
See the before and after below?
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It’s an easy, although very messy job. My bedroom ceiling only took a few hours.
Check out how much plaster comes off though:
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That’s about half of it.
Sheesh. No wonder my arms and legs ache!
Luckily the girls rooms are already smooth since they were the asbestos ones. But that still leaves plastered ceilings in the hall, entrance way, lounge, dining and kitchen. I can’t see me getting all the rooms stripped before our things are delivered, but I am going to attempt to finish stripping the lounge.
Today I’ve been painting the bedroom ceilings. The undercoat/sealer is on in all 3 bedrooms:
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It is so much lighter and brighter without those dark beams!
(Not to mention the dark purple wardrobe and trim.)
More painting on the cards for tomorrow.
Hopefully by Wednesday evening I will have these 3 rooms finished and will have started on the lounge.
A girl can hope right 
One thing is for certain, I should have buns of steal after all this climbing up and down a ladder…
The builder is progressing really well on my rumpus/sewing room as well. Hopefully I’ll have time for some updates on that tomorrow…
I think you need a stripper ;o)
I have never understood the appeal of textured walls! IMHO, not only are they ugly, but all those bumps are just another place to catch dust too – not to mention that if you bump up against it, it can hurt!!!
Your Dad did a great job by the fireplace – it looks so much better now. 😀
We call that stuff on the ceiling “popcorn” – it’s supposed to be acoustical I think. Glad to hear yours is coming off easily. (The guys that spray that stuff on ceilings always look like they’ve had flocks of birds flying over them! LOL)
OXO