we use the toothed darby, spats, featheredges, spongefloats and floats to get a mint fined down finish at 15mm on blockwork in one day. You could put a fibreglass mesh in the first pass for ultimate crack resistance and then a self-cleaning paint system for a propper traditional finish done with modern methods. All prebagged of course for guaranteed quality of mix and sprayed on and finished in a day.