Beginners Guide To Plastering OLD WALLS In 2023 (FULL PROCESS REVEALED)

hello this is blaine gray here plastering for guinness in today's video i'm going to show you an effective way to renovate your home i'll show you how to turn your old walls into fresh looking plaster and and that's through replastering walk you through the full process and how to re-plaster the walls in your house and this video will go from wallpaper to fresh plaster and we'll show you everything in between show you how to fill the pla walls ready for plastering show you how to prepare them and then we'll show a complete beginner's guide on how to plaster walls for yourself have you ever done it before you haven't this is a guide for anyone who's looking to renovate their homes and transform their old walls into new looking pieces of art okay so the first thing we did in this room is we stripped the wallpaper that's my sister there stripping it back and all we used was water and a scraper don't use anything else and then what we were left with was a bare wall now the process that follows after this we're going to go into how to prepare this wall ready for plastering and walk you through the full process what we do need to do is prepare the walls ready for when the finished plaster so i've got a few areas where we've got a few potholes there might be a crack up there might have to dig that out and um replant it but basically what we're going to do is just fill these deeper areas first got this to deal with a bit of a plug face it's just been badly filled in so what i've got to do is scrape back any high spots and then fill it so we've got using undercoat plaster so we do that first we're filling any blown areas that was hiding under the wallpaper and then we've got to prepare the wall so we'll show you exactly how to do that before we start plastering so here's what we need we've got thistle undercoat plaster you can either use this or british chips and bonding this is an english product and but to prime the walls we're going to need this we've got some pva brand wise i usually go for evo stick i've just got the no-nonsense stuff because you didn't have that in stock but pva wise doesn't really matter what you buy pva is pva um so we're gonna prime the walls first gonna pva the walls and then we're gonna apply the undercoat plaster to the areas that need it so in terms of mixes we need mix together three parts water to one part pva you literally put it in a bucket you don't have to measure out accurately but as best as you can basically three parts water one part pva mixed in a bucket mix together so it's a nice even consistency and then all you do is just apply it to the walls if you want to be extra cautious if you've got walls that are a bit porous you can apply two coats of pva first one is five parts water one pva wait for that to dry and then apply another coat of pva three parts water one part pva this just makes sure you've got a real secure bond to the wall looking at the state of this these walls don't look too porous um so i'm just gonna go for the one coat three parts water one part pva so mix it in the bucket and then we're just gonna whack it on now one final thing before we start what we want to do is address any cracks that are in the wall existing so for example we have this where the corners of the room meet we've got a crack running down there what you want to do is apply this this is fiberglass scrim tape what you do is you apply this this is tickies it's got um it's self self adhesive so what you do is you just line it along the crack and you just place it what this will do is allow an extra layer of security so if the building does move this should hold keep the plaster together and stop it from cracking with the building so if you've got any cracks on your wall any areas that look a bit dodgy i'm going to put a bit of scrim tape around this as well apply your scrim tape directly to the wall and then you pva over it you don't want to do it the other way around the scrim tape doesn't like stick to wet pva so apply this first and then pva the wall [Music] okay so here's a quick tip you've got to wait for the pva to dry before you do anything else and i'm about to get a new travels because like i said i've come away and i'm gonna help my sister plaster room i didn't know it was coming i didn't have any clothes about to buy some new tools quick tip get some fine sanding paper and then the edges you travel give it a send because no travels are actually perfectly ready for plastering you always get the machine edge that shows grind it down bit of fine sandpaper do that whilst waiting for this uh pva to dry because if you are new and you've got a brand new trowel do it it'll make you work so much better so do this with all your trowels you want okay the pva's dried it's time to mix the undercoat plaster this comes in powder form and when you do it it's water in the bucket first slowly add the powder so you get a nice thick consistency actually has instructions on the back for how much water to plaster ratio what we're looking for is a thicker consistency so it's easier to fill in any low spots of the wall so i'm going to mix it up right now i've got water ready in a bucket mix it up and i'll show you how to apply it [Music] okay so i'm gonna scoop a bit of bonding oh sorry undercoat plaster onto the hook this is a perfect way to start practicing using your trowel because this is a thicker product it's gonna be easier to learn with compared to the finer finished plaster which we're going to go into later on in video like i said this is an undercoat plaster so it's thicker and it's a bit easier to use if you're starting out so we've got a section here which was the main reason we mixed it up it was big crack running down basically the plaster would blow so take plaster pop it in there take off the excess actually our spring tape won't come on loose and then flatten it off for your towel [Music] so that is at this moment in time literally all we're doing we're just filling in the majority of the hole don't have to worry about it getting it smooth don't worry about that just get it so you've got most of the travel lines out smooth over your travel getting rid of the high spots or excess plaster take it rip it off into the hawk job done worry about the rest after what i'm doing here is an area where the wall isn't quite level so you can also use this plaster to level it off there's a bit of a dip use the undercoat plaster to fill in any low areas again using your trowel okay so the bonding's dried now once bondage dried you want to put a pva a coat of pva onto it allow that to dry and then you're ready for plastering but now we're ready to mix i'm going to show you a quick guide on how to mix plaster talk about ratios in terms of how much water you need how much water you need per bucket and per bag of plaster i'm going to show you that right now from another clip i've done another video it's not complicated it's just knowing how many liters of water you need to one bag of plaster from there i'm just going to go straight into plastering as well so let's do it okay so this is what we're going to be using for the plastering we've got one big mixing bucket keep this nice and clean this is what we're doing mixing all our finished products which is this this is british gypsum multi-finish and this is what we're going to be using for our plastering today you can also buy board finish which is also by british gypsum which is a finished plaster which is fine it's good to use i'm just going to be using this today so they're the options you've got i'll be using a hawk or some people call it hand board got this which is a bucket troll this is what we use to scoop the plaster onto the hook we've got a trowel 14 inch and then we'll need two clean water buckets this is what we'll be carrying the water into and this one dirty bucket is what we're cleaning our tools with cleaning equipment with so i'm also using this electric mixer i highly advise you get a mixer just because to hand mix any plastic it'd end up clumpy it's hard to use and generally the best way to plaster is with a smooth consistent mix you can buy these quite cheap to be honest if you can get them from 40 to 80 pound have a good look around or if worse comes worse you can use it an old drill with a head-on interchangeable headset an sds drill or you could even hire one but generally try and use a decent mix surfing mix it's worth it so always use clean water when you're mixing the plaster i've got a bucket of clean water here and always make sure your book is nice and clean give it a swirl around give it a little brush i've already done that and just make sure you're cleaning with clean clean mixing so clean conditions so what you do so i've got a full bag of plaster for a full bag of plaster we'll need 12.5 litres of water roughly so you pour your water in first don't put all the bag in at once do it in sections helps keep it mixed nice move and stops it doing too much on the drill [Music] now a good thing to do is take your bucket trowel again make sure it's clean scrape the edges [Applause] [Applause] [Music] take mixer give it a tap and then you just need to clean this so you clean a cleaning bucket that's it okay so a quick talk on the consistency obviously you don't want it too sloppy yet you don't want it too thick as you can see when you're putting your trowel it sits it doesn't fall off the edge you know it's not too thick where it's too hard to put on the wall yet it's not too sloppy where it's streaming everywhere this is exactly what you want a bit like angel delight chocolate one look at that it looks lovely that's how you want it all right fold start just want to get a few things out of the way when you're plastering you always start at the top first so i've done the top section of wall and there here's the other rule of thumb if you're right-handed you work left to right if you're left-handed you work right to left that's because when you're working against yourself say if i've got the trowel in my right hand i'll catch anything that falls in the left hand with my hawk on my handboard so that's first rule of thumb what i'm going to do now is walk you through the whole process on how to plaster a wall it's roughly seven steps that i'm going to show you today and within that i'm going to go into detail on each part but for now the first stage is just applying plastic to the wall so take your trowel got your plaster starting from the left side of the wall you come in so put the plaster on the hook a few scoops and take the plaster off your travel and then you go in again left side of the wall so at the moment we're going to put left side of a trowel to the left side of the wall that's where you want the plaster to be on the left side of your travel that's where we're going to aim to get it and bring it in come across so get that section done now at this stage don't worry if there's any ripples or lines in the plaster we've got plenty of time to get that out people think you just apply plaster to the wall and then that's it you've got one chance it's not true we're just applying the plaster don't worry about lines don't worry about ripples don't worry if there's any marks showing that's fine we just want to get the first coat of plaster on so keep loading up okay we've got the left side of the wall on now we're going to do a bit differently instead of traveling from the left side we're going to start troweling upwards so again you still want to trowel the plaster in the same mark left side of the travel but let me show you how it works now plaster then you take the plaster off your hawk and then you come up so instead of traveling left to right try them vertically now all the way up come back on yourself and then trial back any lines and that's how you get the plaster on the wall now working vertically so take the plaster from the heart now there's a few lines at the top where i'm meeting into the top half of the plaster again don't worry about that we just want to get a plaster one at this stage so again i'll show you one more time load your plaster up need a bit more there [Applause] okay now we've come to the right side of the wall now we're going to pull the plus from the right side and pull it in it's the same motion as before take the plaster right side pull it in so now we want the plaster the right side of the trowel then we're going to direct that to the right side of the wall and work horizontally like so [Music] now that should first cut the plaster on the wall again don't worry about any ripples don't worry about any lines gonna go that into the minute so you apply first coat of plaster now i'm gonna do the same on this wall if you're a beginner just do one wall at a time but i'm gonna go into the next stage now that's stage one applying your first coat okay so the plaster is on the wall now what we're going to do is quickly give that first coat a little flattened again you don't need too crazy about it but we just want to take out the little ripples or the lines we left before after this we are going to apply another coat of plaster the reason we flatten it first because if that dries through with the ridges showing it might show through the second coat of plaster leaving bumps and lumps so keeping your travel quite close to the wall just gently glide across taking out any lines and the trick is when you keep your travel close close to the wall i'm just taking anything out again coming up as well i'm just copying the same motions what we were doing before without adding the plaster so i'm coming up troweling any lines out now again you don't have to worry too much about this we're going to put another coat of plaster onto it and you've got so much time as you'll see in this video to get it right just get the lines out don't worry let's start all okay so once that's flattened you want to get rid of any mess clean up your tools and we're going to mix up a new batch of plaster now there's the difference the second coat usually uses half the amount of plastic to the first coat so you don't want to mix as much as before but in your good rule of thumb mix the new batch plaster for the second coat it just makes life so much easier so i'm going to get this cleaned and get a new coat on let's do it i've treated me too cheese tomato toasty with a cup of tea so when you know you've got a good in so let's carry on i'm gonna have a little stat and then we're gonna move on to the next stage okay so we've got the top half of the wall plastered we're gonna go the second coat just want to get a bit closer you can kind of see what i'm doing skipping the plaster from the hawk and then coming in to the left as you can see my trousers quite close i've never i've never got an open trowel go keep track keep the trowel close to the wall and then what we're doing is as we're coming in we're slowly pivoting the travel closer and closer and that's what disperses the plastic to the wall so as i'm coming i'm consciously tilting the plaster close to the wall and by the end the plaster's gone so and then come back on yourself give it a flattening again again very close you're never on uncontrolled because if you have an open trowel you'll just pull the plaster off you want it nice and close tucked in so again filling in any spots now that we missed from the first coat working on your corners taking your time on the internal corners as well just coming in and starting to feel it even more the reason we put two coats of plaster on is if there's any low spots after the first at least you can fill it with a second so that's that way and now i'm going to go hop vertically and take you close up on that so the problem with the vertical is you've got a lot more plaster disperse and because you've got a longer sweep with the left and the tops you only have a short distance with the verticals you've got quite the way to go let's come all the way to the bottom and come all the way up and then what i like to do is come back try out the lines behind myself try and get it flat as i go and then again take the plaster right at the bottom tilt in my trowel closer to the wall by that point i'm virtually flat and that's because all the plasters onto the wall at that point come back trowel lines out come back on myself try and get it flat as i go so i'll show you one more time come to the bottom and then as you can see slow motion that trowel is getting closer and closer and closer and closer and closer and closer until all the class is gone and when the plaster is gone you can trowel it flat so one more time use up the plaster going balsa and there we go going back and trying out anything i've left behind so that's um a close-up guide on how to apply plaster i'm going to complete this wall now apply the second coat then we're going to continue on to the next stage i've cleaned up we're going to get rid of this now we don't need this mixing bucket we don't need the hawk we don't need a bucket trout we're done with that so i have two buckets one for cleaning up with one for the clean water which going to use later on in the process of plastering but for now these can go get them out of the room we don't need them anymore now our job is going to continue to flatten these walls the rest of the process is fairly repetitive actually let's be honest plastering is repetitive to get better plastering just got to keep doing it more and more and more it's very simple motions but it takes time to perfect because your body's not used to it but in time your hand and your trowel will be like an extension of yourself you'll feel your trial and it'll be very natural to use it don't feel bad if at this stage everything feels clunky and everything's hard i've been doing this for about 14 years now don't compare yourself to me i'm not saying i'm the best but i've been doing it for a longer time which means it's a bit easier for a beginner for anyone who's starting out this will be hard because you're just not used to doing it but here's the process and here's your secret to mastering plastering just do it all the time and that is it it's very simple motions and very repetitive there's not much to it it's just keep doing it over and over again and so your body learns to do their motions with your trowel and hook so that's the big tip i can say for anyone who wants to start plastering professionally but for now let's carry on get rid of these buckets keep your water buckets we're going to be using them but we're just going to flatten them okay so now we're doing was just continuing to fly so i've already done the top half like i said it's very repetitive we'll keep in the same order start at the top left work across come to the bottom left work across that's because i'm right handed it's very repetitive and you want to keep doing the same thing so your body gets used to the same motions but we're going to do now we're just flattening any ripples out let me show you what i mean see we've got a few of these now you can actually see in the light we've got a few ridges a few bumps what we're going to be doing is bringing them out so what we're doing now is we're troweling the wall flatter and flatter let me put you back so i can show you what i mean so starting in the left coming up where you left off keeping travel close to the wall just getting them lines out very very close to the wall you want your travel close you don't want to tilt it open like i said before if you have an open trial you're going to scrape all the plaster off keep the travel close to the wall and you're putting pressure behind it you're actually pushing into your travel and then keeping that rigid stance rigid grip you're literally forcing the ripples and the lines out of the plaster if you just go lightly you're just going to follow the ridges it's not going to do anything you need pressure lots of pressure and what i like to do is come as far across as possible and what we're doing if we collect any you see my trowel this is called fat this is excess plaster what you want to do is see any loose holes or if you see any pits again i'll show you one so see what you mean see a section here a little hole take the excess plastic you see i've left the line of plaster there fill it again there the idea at this stage is to not only flatten we also want to fill if you don't fail at this stage the plaster will dry and you'll be finding it harder and harder to collect that loose plaster off your travel so we're trialing and we're filling as we go now we're doing the same but we're going vertically so we did it horizontally and then trolling out any lines just pushing in and just keeping that wall nice and tidy what we're doing is just getting rid of them lines any holes we've got a low spot there a little spot there so plaster doesn't flatten itself you've got to really work it you've got to push them lines out of it at this stage the plaster is still quite wet it's got a lot of movement you can manipulate the lines you can manipulate the plaster and its shape as time goes on is what i'm going to go into in the next few steps gets a bit harder so i'm going to complete the rest of this wall get the lines out fill in any holes and then we're going to move forward so that is stage four quick tip this is why i don't like buying the flexi tubs because what you get it's plaster and the rubber from the bucket goes into the plaster if you're going to buy a bucket i've just got this gun and i'm here for um i'm on a holiday actually show me platinum just helping my sister start to get a load of new tools do you want to spend a lot of money if you are going to do it get the proper mix in plastering tubs not the flexi ones the plastering sub is a lot harder it's a harder plastic it's less light that you're going to break it and put it into your plaster flexes i use for backing plasters like bonding don't use them to finish it's a good tip okay moving on this point we're going to use this this is a water brush this is a six inch water brush you can get a proper plaster as one again i bought cheap from being cute this is perfect for anyone else who's gonna be doing the same thing for the first time fitness was seven and one seven and a half quid or something 150 miller millimeter brush so this is six inch and this is perfect because it'll hold a lot of water and it it'll hold a lot of water and the reason we're going to do it is because this plaster is drying as the plaster dries it starts to get harder and harder to flatten and that's because it's getting harder as a product it's strengthening it's getting it's binding together and it's starting to uh materialize so we need water to bring it back a little bit so again we're gonna start on the top left apply a bit of water to your edges internal edges there not loads and then trowel him and what you'll find now is the wall is going to help it glide a bit more it's going to take it a bit further so we're coming in if you didn't use this one or two things might happen it might tear the plaster or it might just be harder to flatten now either way water just helps you on your mission to get this wall flat as you go so i believe at this stage it's a must so coming in and what we're doing now is we're really starting to flatten it but again same motions that's what's saying about repetition close to the wall fixed rigid grip a lot of pressure but we're doing the same movements nothing's changed nothing at all okay now we're going to go vertically putting water at the bottoms this time coming all the way up i only need a little bit of water as you can see now we're getting the wall flatter and flatter and flatter same motions just going vertically and then taking any ridges out of plaster real firm grip pushing it into the plaster as we go because you might not see it but there will be ridges in the plaster and the reason you keep going over it is to get it flatter and flatter you've got to think at the beginning we were trying to put a liquid-based product on the wall it doesn't that's the baby it doesn't work [Music] cool [Music] [Music] okay this is the second to last stage of plastering and this is probably one of the easiest stages everything you've done so far has put the groundwork in for this point the wall should be flat the areas should be filled should be smooth-ish all we're going to do now on this stage is just polish the plaster um it's just to give it that final touch give it that smooth finish and get rid of any final lines or fine ripples that might be in the plaster but again it's mainly to polish it up so now remember that clean bucket of what we had before we want to get that out and our water brush and this is where we use a flexi travel now you do not need a flexi trowel this is a recently uh new addition to the plastering world and not every old-school plaster even knew what this was this wasn't invented but this is just basically at this point it's nice to use a trowel with a bit of flexibility in it so it's not as harsh on the joints and it just brings out the polish plaster look a bit more better it just makes it look a bit nicer again you can just keep using the traditional base trowel that you've had throughout this whole stage but for me i like to finish with a flexi trowel so this is called the wet trowel what we do is grab your water brush again left to right come all the way across and then we're cross troweling so we're going to come across so that is called a cross travel and that's because we're going across the plaster rather than up and vertically like most the majority of the movements we have been doing so again clean your trousers should not be any fat on at this stage you're not picking up any plaster you want the plaster to be fairly dry when you're doing this you don't need pulling anything off the wall your wall is done it's flat we're just getting it nice so clean off any wet areas in your travel come across again [Applause] and this is just polishing the wall [Applause] it helps to give the plaster a uniform texture uniform colour and it just helps to bind it all together and polish it up nicely so trick is keep cleaning your trowel wet up your brush come across and again keep going as low as you can until you've done the whole wall that is how simple the wet trowel is there's not much to it but it's very effective in polishing up the plaster that's there give that a few minutes so i'm going to show you the final stage of plastering let's go on to it plastering it's the exact same thing as what we did before the wet trowel it's called the dry trowel we do the same thing with no water so i've cleaned off the trowel completely clean there's no fat on there and then we go to the top so do the exact same thing as before but with a dry travel anymore should it collect wipe it off go again it just gives that wall a final polish let me show you if you look down that is it that is how you completely renovate your old walls take off the wallpaper prep the background and then completely plaster it that is the full process so if you enjoyed this video please hit the like button please subscribe to our channel but more importantly if you want to take this further and then explore the world plus this is a very brief run drop down on what to do but if you want to break free and you want to break down of every stage and how to do it specifically then feel free to join our free welcome calls from plastering beginners i'll show you the full process of plastering where we'll go into this but break each stage down and make it easy to understand and easy for you to recreate so if you want to do that hit the link below this video should be something flying about here but otherwise for more videos just subscribe to our channel and you get keep getting content like this every week thanks so much for watching my name is blaine gray see you on the next one cheers [Music] you

Channel: Plastering For Beginners

Views: 182,356

Keywords: renovate your home, renovate your home for cheap, renovate old house, beginners guide to plastering, renovate old house to modern, old house new, plaster old walls, plastering walls, plastering walls in old houses, plastering for beginners, renovate old walls

Id: cck8NoVp2WA

Length: 38min 42sec (2322 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 08 2022