The Tasks that the plasterers at iPlaster are expected to accomplish.
- Hang cornerbead
- "Bead" comes in many styles; Ranging from wire mesh attached by staples too heavier metal grades the need to be tacked on with nails. Plastic varieties also exist.
- The bead must be measured and cut to size; care is taken not to bend or warp it. In places where more than one corner meets; the bead's ends are cut at an angle and the 2 or more tips are placed as close together as allowable; touching but not overlapping. The bead is completely covered with plaster as well as the rest of the wall and the plaster also helps to hold it firm. The finished product leaves only a small exposed metal strip at the protrusion of the corner which gets covered when the wall is painted. This leaves a clean, straight looking corner.
- An alternative method seen in older houses of forming a rounded or bullnosed corner uses a quirked wooden staff bead. The staff bead, a 1 inch dowel with approx 1/3 shaved off the back, is set on the external corner by the joiner on site, fastened to wooden plugs set into the brick/block seams, or to the wood frame. Plaster is run up to the staff bead and then cut back locally to the bead or "quirked" to avoid a weak feather edge where the plaster meets the bead.
- In architecture a quirk is a small 'V' shaped channel used to insulate and give relief to a convex rounded moulding. To create the plastered corner, backing coat (browning) is plastered up to the staff bead, then the quirk is cut into the backing coat a little larger than the finished size. When the top skimming coat is applied, again the bead is fully skimmed in and then, using a straight edge, the quirk is re-cut to the finished depth, usually on an approximate 45 degree angle into the bead. The quirk will hide the eventual small crack that will form between the staff bead and plaster.
- Sets up his tools
- Normally a plasterer has one trowel for "laying on" (the process of placing mud onto the wall).
- Some then keep an older trowel that has a decent bend in it (banana curve) to be used for the purpose of "texturing"; if called for by the homeowner. A lay-on trowel tends to be too flat for this and the vacuum caused by the water can stick it to the wall, forcing him to tear it off and thus he has to rework the area.
- Finally, one may have a brand new trowel "not yet broken-in" which he will used for "grinding"; this is when the plaster is nearly hardened and he is smoothing out any bumps or filling in any small dips to make the wall look like a uniform sheet of glossy white plaster.
The plasterer usually must first staple or tack Cornerbead onto every protruding (external) corner of the inside of the house. Care is taken to make sure this makes the wall look straight and is more of a skill of the eye then anything else.
The plasterer needs to fill a 5-gallon bucket partway with water. From this bucket he hangs his trowel or trowels and places into it various tools.
Most plasterers have their own preference for the size of the trowel they use. some wield trowels as large as 20 inches in length but the norm seems to be a 16"x5".
Into the bucket also goes a large brush used to splash water onto the wall and to clean his tools, a paint brush for smoothing corners, and a corner bird for forming corners (though many share one good bird to keep the room harmonious).
These tool buckets are first kept near the mix table and then as the plaster starts to set are moved closer to the wall that is being worked on. Time becomes a big factor here as once the plaster starts to harden (set) it will do so fairly rapidly and the plasterer has a small margin of error to get the wall smooth.
Onto the mixing table the plasterer usually sets his "hawk" so it will be handy when he needs to grab it and to keep dirt off of it. Any debris in the plaster can become a major nuisance.
Plasterers will typically divide a room, (especially a large or high-ceilinged wall) into top and bottom. The one working on top will do from the ceiling's edge to about belly height and work off a milk crate for an 8-foot (2.4 m) ceiling, or work off stilts for 12-foot-high rooms. For cathedral ceilings or very high walls, staging is set up and one works topside, the others further below.
Typically done with the laborer. No plaster globs left on the floors, walls or corner bead edges. (They will show up if painted and interfere with flooring and trim). Remove or neatly stack all trash.
