How to Smooth Out Uneven Plaster With a Skim Coat

let me ask you have you ever had a wall that been patched so many times it just was a real eyesore and you wish that you could smooth it out well you know what if its drywall you got a ton of options but here's the thing if you've got an older home with plaster walls it's not an easy fix but what is an easy fix is a skim coat and today I'm going to show you how to do that okay so let's quickly go over the tools and materials you're going to need you need a bucket with clean cold water you're going to need a finished round I suggest that you use a good finished route because there's nothing like trying to lay down a skim coat with a cheap tool this is a Marshall towel that's what I like to use next you want to have a bristle brush paintbrush will do but I suggest that you use a natural bristle brush instead of a synthetic brush because you know natural bristles they really hold the water next I like to have a margin trowel you don't have to have it but it's a convenient tool and that's what this is now this tool here that's called a hawk what it does is it hold your plaster it's a very convenient tool to have go onto the material now what this is is it's a quick set joint compound you may be saying well aren't we skim coating a plaster wall yes we are now there are countless materials that you can use for skim coat but I want to give you a material that's going to be easy for you to work with and you'll have the best chance of success and that's what this stuff will do now it comes in 20 45 90 120 and those numbers kind of denote how long you have for the material is set so if you went with a 20 oh it's going to go very quickly so if you have a very small space you may want to use this if you have a larger space you may want to go with 45 I suggest that you use a 90 because it's going to give you plenty of time so I've got my mud here and I've got it on top of the table so listen take a little bit of mud off and smear it on your Hawk okay and then clean it off I know doesn't make sense but here's the thing that little bit of material that you put on your Hawk when you load up your Hawk it's going to hold it in place I don't want to show you mean by that so I'm scooping it on so got my mud on my Hawk all right it's going to stay there I can take the hawk and flip it upside down look at that it's not going anywhere this is a wall that we did a few weeks ago for demonstration purposes look at how rough that is well I'm going to smooth that out and this is how you do it you start off you want to start off with a fair amount of mud on your trowel okay it's a fair amount I'm just going to scoop up now come down this much mud okay so I want you to see the hawk okay because I want to show you the amount of mud that I'm taking off you want to lightly skim over this this is going to really help you get the plaster off your tools I don't start from from behind the mud start from atop the mud and just glaze over okay so that's a fair amount you bring it over to your wall and the if you're holding the trowel at a 90 degree angle you're not going to be able to place mud on the wall so you want to lean it in tip it in now the closer you get to the wall the more mud you're going to put on okay the further you get from the wall angle wise your trowel to the wall the less so for this you wanna put a thin coat on that's why they're calling it a skimmer okay so what I have is I have my first coat up and this is called the scratch coat why is it called the scratch coat well if you look closely you can see all these tracks we call them cat faces in it it's not perfect it's not smooth and it doesn't look good but that's okay because it's going to help the second coat which is going to be the finished coat really adhere better to it's going to key it in okay so what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my trowel I'm just going to scrape off all the loose stuff first because what's going to happen is if I didn't do this I would get trash in my finished coat and then I would have a heck of a time really lay it down smooth okay now comes time to put my finished coat on and it does not take as much mud on the trowel off the hawk that's what this is to do um your finish coat like I said it doesn't take much what's happening is the scratch coat there's some suction going on and it's drawing all the moisture out of the fish hook that we're putting on and it's helping it actually to set up give it a nice clean fit I'm going to do some up and down strokes start at the bottom go up come down now the thing is it takes very little or just filling in all the imperfections those things that I call cat faces and tracks that's what we're filling in there start at the bottom skip up and then come down then you want it you get to a point where it's a nice motion so I've got my finished codon and now we're going to really lay it down make it smooth as glass now it probably looks pretty doggone smooth but if you're moving closely you'll see some imperfections like right here can you see that that's an imperfection we're going to get rid of that you want to catch your plaster not when it it's dry to the touch it's nice and firm but I can still feel the moisture it's it feels damp it doesn't feel dry as a bone if you wait too long and it dries out completely you won't be able to lay this finish coat down to a glassy smooth finish I have a just a regular paint brush with bristles because I know that this is something that you'll have at home alright so what we're going to do is we're going to wet the wall and I'm going to start from the top so I've got my water on there okay you're throwing throwing on a lot of water okay because water is your sandpaper you want to have a clean trial because if you have just a little bit of plaster build up you're not going to get a glassy finish okay now what I'm going to do is I'm going to use the trowel to remove the water from the surface see how the waters catch that water it's removing it from the surface but it's also filling in all those cat faces I showed and you just continue to remove the water from the circles now sometimes you might wind up with a stubborn stubborn spot see where that's not perfect just rub it out with a little water like that okay then I'll go over what you want to do is you want to continue to do the process until you have your your your surface completely smooth get out all those cat faces and tracks don't use too much water because you don't want to get blistered the water from the surface and I'm applying pressure now I don't want you to think that I'm just lightly you have to apply firm pressure okay so we're finished with our wall and if you move in close I can show you just how perfect on watches you don't see any blemishes whatsoever now I put my hand here so you can see what I'm talking about do you see where it's perfect okay so we've got the finished wall behind us perfectly smooth and what I'll say is if you remember we started off with a heavy texture and we skim right over it and you can't see the first hint of a lump okay and that's really what you want to accomplish here that's what a skim coat is for what it does so if you've got some unsightly walls at home a skim coat is your answer okay so here's the thing knowing what to do is important but technique is probably the most important so what I would encourage you to do is practice first nothing wrong with a little practice before you actually start doing the skim coat this is Leah saying you you can do this see you next time you

Channel: seejanedrill

Views: 1,188,688

Rating: 4.9073162 out of 5

Keywords: plaster, repair plaster, smooth plaster, plaster wall, plaster ceiling, skim coat, how to, how-to, joint compound, mud, plaster trowel, hawk, smooth texture, how to plaster, repair wall, repair ceiling, what is skim coat, plaster tips, skim coat tips, easy skim coat, technique, tools, plaster tools, plaster technique, diy, do it yourself, diy plaster repair, diy plaster, old home, old home walls, older home, renovate, fix walls, fix plaster, skim coat wall, how to skim

Id: Mob1K_P_L8U

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 17 2014