With a third, thin coat you save on material cost and do much less fine-screening of materials. The advantage to doing a thin, final coat with color is that you use much less pigment, white clay, and mica then if you try to color a thicker, 2nd plaster coat. Wall curving out from a door – 2nd coat of plasterĪlthough I originally (and perhaps naively) thought we could get away with only two coats of plaster on the walls, I decided eventually that it would be best to finish the walls with a third layer to add color. Ultimately, the way we did our base coat seems to have allowed us to achieve good final results, but with each plaster coat it is always best to strive to get it as flat and uniform as possible (although the inevitable imperfections are part of its charm and beauty!). Pre-packing mud in places in the wall where mortar had been eroded might have also made it easier to get the base coat a bit flatter. In retrospect, I probably would have tried to get the base coat a bit flatter and more uniform, as this would have made the subsequent coats of plaster easier to apply. You can find earlier posts on the topic of our base coat of earthen plaster here and here. If you end up applying your plaster in 2 or 3 layers, you’ll gain some good skills and intuition from applying the early layers, and you’ll be able to put them to good use on your finish coat. Earthen plasters are quite forgiving and workable, but it takes a lot of skill and effort to make them look good. I suggest first learning as much as you can through books and online resources, but ultimately, you’ll learn the most through trial and error. On the topic of clay paint, I also found The Year of Mud to be another helpful resource. Their website LanderLand has some great information on plastering, trowels, and other earthen construction topics. I’m also a big fan of the plaster work of Tom and Satomi Lander, who were kind enough to have me out to their place when I was new to southwest New Mexico. This is the best book on the subject of clay plasters that I have seen. I would recommend that anyone reading this consider getting a copy of Carole Crews’ book on clay plastering, Clay Culture. Now that we have finally applied finish plaster to some of our walls, I feel comfortable sharing more details of our process, as our results have been highly satisfactory. It’s also really hard to take accurate photos of plaster, especially without interior lighting! We have essentially been learning as we go, making adjustments to our techniques and process as we figure things out. I’ve been hesitant to describe our plastering process up until now, as I still consider myself to be a bit of a plastering novice.
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