technique for plaster-look walls

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We put new drywall up in our kitchen and dining area, and I didn't care much for the "new" look of it in our old farmhouse. The rest of the walls and ceiling are plaster, complete with chunks missing and imperfections, etc. I find that look charming, and wanted the new kitchen walls to blend better with the rest of the old house.

I took paper feed sacks and ripped them into large pieces. These I applied to the wall with plain old cheap wall-paper paste. I used a roller thing to make it all stick good & flat, but I also deliberately left wrinkles in the paper, jagged edges, etc. I overlapped the paper on some areas, and left it sparse in other areas. I used a ruler to "squeegee" out the excess paste from under the papers, and a damp cloth to wipe up clots of paste from the surface. After everything dried, I painted over it, and it looks GREAT! Just like plaster, imperfections and all. I am totally pleased with the effect, and my friends all say it looks good, too. And cheap---the wall paper paste was the biggest expense, at $2.25 a box. If you don't have feed sacks, you can use paper grocery sacks. Also, either way, I ripped off the straight edges and the top of the sack where the thread goes. You want your papers to have a ripped/jagged edge all the way around.

Even if you're not going for a plaster look, you could use this technique on damaged walls just to make them look more uniform.

Now, any good advice for a cheap floor??

-- Shannon at Grateful Acres Animal Sanctuary (gratacres@aol.com), January 04, 2002

Answers

Neat Shannon.

Thanks for sharing your idea.

-- Rick#7 (rick7@postmark.net), January 04, 2002.


concrete or wood floor?

I am fixing to tear out all my carpet and paint the concrete!

-- Rose (open_rose@hotmail.com), January 04, 2002.


Congrats on your project Shannon! I too have banged up old plaster walls and when I start some demo work and moving some walls, I will be running into this same problem of combining old and new.

I'm not sure what option I will choose, but I have access to a lot of flour bags so I'll keep that in mind. With my plaster walls I plan to do a light glazing. I'm leaning towards a light golden yellow in what will be my livingroom. Glaze can bring out some beautiful textures and it's not very expensive. I love all the waves and cracks, etc. too.

Per the floors..as somebody else asked..what do you have? I have badly painted hardwood on the first floor and painted rough wideboard on the second. I am going to sand and poly the hardwood. Room by room as energy and money allows. On the second floor, I am going to fill the gaps between the boards [because I am blowing insulation between first and second floor]. I haven't decided the best material to use yet. Then I plan to paint the boards with a tough paint that is rated for floors. I also plan to remove all the old battle gray paint off the original cast metal circular floor vents upstairs. I really like them and want to show them off.

Good luck and let us know what you do with the floors! PC [who really wants eggplant colored rough wideboards upstairs]

-- pc (pc@somewhere.com), January 04, 2002.


Rose, are you going to just paint them with like deck paint or are you going to etch them with acid and stain them. I live in a 40 year old house with concrete floors, but they were not careful when they built the houses and they often have stains from where they set the kitchen cabinets on the floor to stain them, paint and other stain. Otherwise, I would rip my carpet up too.

-- connie in nm (karrelandconnie@msn.com), January 04, 2002.

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