can u identify this finish?

Status
Not open for further replies.

axnjoe

New Member
Hi everyone
I need a little help. I am a contractor here in the US and I am working on a new home modeled after ones in Enland. Typically we hang and finish drywall to smooth finishes. I was told that on this house they want the interior walls to look lumpy like something of an old Engish castle walls. I have only seen this lumpy texture once before on a 100 year old Enlish tudor. On this new house the walls will transition thru a curve to meet the ceiling. Curving the upper corner will be easy to do but I cant find any information on this lumpy texture they are requesting. I have searched eveything I can think of on the internet about old world wall textures and can not find anything. So I am seeking advice from some skilled tradesmen to answer the question.
The base material will be of the standard 5/8 inch thick gypsum board and will be finished with tape and joint compound to a smooth finish and that is when I am to do the rest.
Where can I find how to do this lumpy finish?

Joe
 
All i can think of mate, is to 2 coat your wall as normal, trowel it up somewhere near repectable then knock up another bag of skim and put thick blobs on with the edge and toe of your trowel. As its pulling off just go over the blobs with a wet sponge to blend in.
 
There are alot of mainly very old pubs /reseraunts  with the old oak beams here in the UK that have the kind of thing i think you are on about, the style is simply called Old English, its a common name used for different types of patterens mainly done with sand/cement externaly, but its also done internaly,
many years ago I worked on an old pub with the old English style of plaster, the extension that was built had to be matched up internaly and it was simply done with render sand/cement and patterend with my trowel, when the render was starting to take up (going slightly stiff) I used a soft brush to bond the cement very gently this was then painted  with a decent masonary paint and no skimming was needed, and you couldent tell the difference from the original,

there are many kinds of  matereials that could be used nowedays  bags of acrilic render I think would be your best bet and lightly brushed off, not skimmed, to give the old english look

hope this helps

sorry just read it again, never realised your going over top of board, once again u could use many materials skimming would do, so would artex
 
not sure what products you have in us. you might be able to mix your jointing compound up slightly thinner and paint it on haphazard like, then sand it?
 
just wondering what you mean by 'lumpy'? ive seen a few places done in a 'clamshell' effect which just looks a bit like blobs of dabbin scraped off the trowel, dunno what its called? or ive seen what ive heard old timers call old english which to me just looks like 1st coat layed on and left...
 
i've been caught out before now doing what i thought was a rough old english only to be told by the customer it wasn't rough enough!
 
my old man years ago (when artex was in its prime) did the whole bleedin house, walls, ceilings the lot with skim and used a wooden float to fetch up a 'broken leather esque' pattern and then painted the whole lot white...
tight arse my dad was ;D
bet some bugger had a loverly job of flattening that lot off years later!!
 
forgot to mention the old man was a joiner, then later a site agent for harbour and general, built the fleetwood and morecambe sea walls, the blackpool mcdonalds and the overground reservoirs in cockermouth...
but he was never much of a plasterer ;D
 
just wondering what you mean by 'lumpy'? ive seen a few places done in a 'clamshell' effect which just looks a bit like blobs of dabbin scraped off the trowel, dunno what its called? or ive seen what ive heard old timers call old english which to me just looks like 1st coat layed on and left...

patterns called "old plaster" and, yes, i have been guilty of applying it! did i mention i love a bit of artex, its coming back! (if i say enough times people will start to believe)
 
job i just did... was origuionally asked to 're-artex' the ceiling... shitty old thing, circles done with a 4" emulsion brush, which could have in fact been 'sandtex' with a couple of baord patches thrown in for good measure and painted shiny white....is now nice and smooth with coving to boot.. yayyy :)
old people again, early seventies...
most of rest of house walls and ceilings done in artex...
be back again to do another room soon methinks... (when they've managed to move the mountains of stuff out the way) ;D
 
that clamshell effect i was on about pug, imagine a trowel ful of stiff dabbin (or skim if you like) gently place against wall and push upwards and inwards to nothing, it leaves a clamshell about an inch thick, randomly placed about 6" apart... looks absolutely dreadful! :D
 
the things we did to homes back in the day! i saw a hall stairs and landing done in something like you describe but done with a 6" brush then random swipes with a filling knife here an there. marvellous!
 
wow
I appreciate the immediate responses.
When I say "LUMPY" I am suggesting that it would be like throwing smow balls at a wall and smoothing the edges where the lumps meet leaving a profile of about 1 inch or 25mm with each lump about 3 inches(75mm) in diameter.
Also, I am not farmiliar with your term "render".
This is to be done internally. Plastering is a bit of a dying trade around here so we do not get to see many people mixing with lime and other products.
We do however do have many old houses that still have plaster and wood lathe that occasionally need repaired. Most contractor just drywall over all the old stuff. I usually try to patch the old plaster with scratch coat then a hard coat.
Are any of you familiar with Sheetrock brand setting compound? Its a lot like plaster I imagine. Our regular joint compound used to skim walls is of a premixed gypsum material. Just open the 40 pound box, dump it in a bucket, mix it quick with a cup of water and start skimming.
 
i once had to patch a chimney 3 storeys up with render in the dead of winter with the flu...
it was almost roughcast origionally but without the stones...
the bit i did, i layed on a coat of render, trowelled it up something like then just got a dustpan style handbrush, kept dipping it in the bucket and hurling it at the wet coat...
didnt look too bad in my frozen flu ridden state on the roof, but at street level...
it looked like the aftermath of a custard pie fight!!
 
gotcha, it's a difficult finish to get right. i'd go with heafys suggestion above, but use the jointing compound your used to working with. its always an advantage to know how your materials are gonna behave..
 
I looked at the link you attached and non of them look like what we are after.
I would like to use plaster for its hardness. Our premixed products are vrey saft and easy to damage not to mention there is a lot of shrinkage during the drying of it. I think the suggestion of applying blobs with the heal and toe of a trowel the smoothing/blending may be a viable method.
 
I think this is the best forum for contractors that i have ever been on. Everyone is very helpful and quick to respond.
The house will be ready for me in about a 2 weeks. Maybe 2 months if they ever get the rolled slate roof on and all the imported Cottswald limestone on the outside. They have been building this for over a year now and the inside still gets a lot of water from the rains.
I still would like to use plaster for its hardness but I am not familiar enough with it to pick which product would be best.
 
can u identify this finish?


or this  ;D
 
the picture is of the shell gardens in jersey... i bet you dont get many contractors asking for that finish. :o
 
Trowell/addict - no nothing like that though that is impressive. this is insde.

Pug - they probably woul fly you here. You may have to ride with the guy that is from there that is doing the silk padded walls.

Bigsegs - Ahhh.... , its getting closer. Maybe if I said it was like a bunch of "A" sized a boobs on the wall. with out any pointy tips. Hows that?
 
back to the thread, without knowing whats available where you are joe, its virtually impossible to advise on any particular product or brand, 99% of us here are living in the uk
 
think wot u would price 4 a job like that..surly 2 get rite could take a while 2 do a wall if u have 2 skim it first aswell?
 
Does the UK primarily use drywall(gypsum board) or is it all still plaster over some type of common base?
if you do indeed use gypsum board,... do you or would you useplaster as a finish coat over gypsum?
 
a lot of the new build stuff is like you do in the us, tape and joint compound... however, most smaller builders still prefer to skim the boards completely as it leaves a better quality, more durable finish, and its also handy if its wallpapered, you can get the wallpaper back off easily without damaging the board underneath..
not so much a dying art over here as yet, more not much work about due to the 'greedy crunch'
 
a lot of the new build stuff is like you do in the us, tape and joint compound... however, most smaller builders still prefer to skim the boards completely as it leaves a better quality, more durable finish, and its also handy if its wallpapered, you can get the wallpaper back off easily without damaging the board underneath..
not so much a dying art over here as yet, more not much work about due to the 'greedy crunch'


Greedy crunch lol spot on that man
 
just remember lads when first time buyers mortgages are upto a grand a month wages pay utility bills.....just and credit cards pay for a holiday for the kids .....................................and that fook off great big telly and nice new set of golf clubs not too mention the new Daiwa Tournament Airity Pole ;D
 
axnjoe, I was in Miami a few years back and there seemed to be a shortage of plasterers in the local paper there was many plasterers /stucco wanted but with almost every add was a drinking is not allowed, is it common for spreads/stucco to be boozeing on site or just booze at dinnertime and dont come back to work

by the way m8 what is stucco? is it another name for a plasterer?
 
Hey UK
I would like to thank all of those who took the time to repond to my posts.
Its probably safe to say that we all agree that a plaster finish is always better than a straight up drywall finish.
Most likely, I will never even see this new owner though out this project so I will leave the plaster/drywall choice up to the decorator or builder.
The greed crunch( I think that you are referring to this global mortgage financial crisis) is hitting us hard here too.

Since my original post has pretty much been anwered I will retire from this post and hopefully take part of another.

Thanks again.
Joe USA
 
i think i know the finish your after, i`ve repaired some walls for a guy in an old river cottage in the hills in east lancashire. the finish looks similar to the picture bigsegs posted but the boobs are closer together. to acheive this finish you mix plaster board finishing plaster or one coat which ever you can get hold of( but board finish is best) quite stiff and it is applied with a gauging trowel with the blobs about 1" apart and random (vertical and horizontal) working about 2m2 a time. then it should be getting quite set you go over it with the 6" brush carefully joining the blobs together.trickier than its sounds to get it uniform. absolute fecking nightmare job. takes ages the guy wants me to do his kitchen and i dont answer his calls :-X
 
Hmmm, glad I followed up on this.

As you guys would say, "I think you are spot on mate".
I think the gauge trowell and random blobs are spot on. I will give the owners some samples. Looks as if there are many different ways of doing it. The house is about 9000 square feet of floor space with walls 12 feet high.
I hope they dont want ALL the walls done and ceilings done but if they do I will probably need some new arms.

As far as I know, the only plaster we have availible around here is scratch coat and the top coat( or diamond coat).
We also have plaster of paris and the SHEETROCK brand powdered setting compound that we call durabond( these com in setting times of 90 minute, 45minute,20minute and 5 minute.
Can you explain what board plaster or what one coat plaster is?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top