This weekend we painted the room that the plasterer barely finished two days before. What could have turned in to a full-blown argument was settled amicably. Karen wanted to paint the walls straight away. I wanted to wait until they were completely dry. In the end we agreed to wait and see what they were like on Saturday. In the mean time we had a heater on the room to help the external walls dry out and I did a little research.
It's all very well telling her you can't paint wet plaster, but when she asks why not i need a better answer than "You just can't!". So I asked the question on the uk.d-i-y newsgroup (a regular haunt of mine at the moment).
As I expected the consensus was that it's definitely not a path to go down. The main problem being that the paint will bubble as the moisture beneath it tries to escape. I relayed this to Karen who said "So! I'll just sand them off and touch it up". She seemed to think that emulsion breathes, whereas the writing on the tin thinks different.
This was the scene on Saturday:
As you can see this particular wall is still quite wet. Undeterred Karen has painted the ceiling and the dry walls. At the same time I was fitting the skirting. At the same time I was fitting the skirting she was painting it!
By Saturday night this wall was still wet so I convinced her to leave the room with the heater on overnight and we could get up early and paint it before the carpet fitter came. Luckily it all dried out by the time got up this morning (Sunday @ 8:30am!) and WWIII was post-poned. By 11am the carpet fitter had been and gone:
He happens to be our neighbour from 3 doors down. Hence the fact he was working on a Sunday. Helping him is his 5 year old, Alfie, with Billy watching on. Cost: trade prices and no labour ;o) Although I don't know what favours they are going to want in return yet.
A few hours later we had all Quinn's stuff moved in. She got home later on and loved it, making all the work worthwhile.
It's at points like this that I'm glad I'm documenting the whole process with the digicam. Let's travel back 7 weeks to the day and see the same scene:
Tomorrow my attention shifts to the room below and some interesting problems to tackle. It's going to be the first chance I get to lay some of the parque flooring we bought back in June.
Jake
Many years ago working at site that that was being rebuilt around me, many of the offices were replastered, when the plasters had finished they brought in dehumidifiers, these took all the hunidity out of the air and speeded up the drying process, they were industrial versions of the ones you can get for helping damp homes. And I believe you can hire then at decent builders hire shops, dont know the cost though.
Posted by: David Wall | October 25, 2004 at 09:42 AM