Plastering Course Weekend One

What a weekend!

Shiny and clean

For the past two days over Saturday and Sunday I have been at the first two days of my Plastering Course. It was brilliant.

I have a LOT of pictures for this update so please excuse if they do not marry up to the text they are near (something I always try to achieve as I'm sure you have noticed) but I have took 37 pictures and my mate Alex took another 22 so believe me I have narrowed this down and deleted loads.

Pear Mill - an outstanding building

Anyway, thinking back to Saturday morning I arrived at Pear Mill really early, but with a book (well kindle) (planning you see) and sat in the truck and after a few minutes Alex walked over and we went for a walk around the outside of the amazing building.

Can you imagine having to lay all those bricks, and the effort it must have been to create this amazing space. Imagine when it was at its peak capacity and the hustle, noise and energy when it was full of people and machines.

Such a beautiful industrial building.

Me and Alex

Anyway, it was cold so it was back into Thomas, engine running and heater going until finally the doors for the course were opened and in we went..... to much abuse from the trainers because of our shiny and clean overalls.

Part of the group

There were about 15 people who arrived that morning but only 7 of us doing the Plastering course. The others were doing a Decorating Course or a Basic Home Maintenance Course. We had a brew (with more amusement when one of the students stole our instructors fresh coffee - minus one star on the board next to her name!) and then split up into groups.

The plastering area

The Plastering area was a collection of bays, half of them already plastered (from the previous mid week course, apparently) and the other half wooden shells which were our bays. First of all Len (our instructor) walked us around the completed bays to give us confidence that these people, with only three days of practice, had done them and to be honest this worked. The finish on every wall would be good enough for me.

The tools of the trade

However Saturday was not a plastering day. We were told to pick a bay and then "right, prepare your area; you need to take out all the nails". An hour or so later, and with aching arms and slightly warm, I had managed to remove almost every nail - it's true that no matter how much you search you will always miss some.

Basically at the end of a course the plasterboard is kicked through and the bays opened out again for the next course (us). They do not, however, remove the nails and this as the first task works really well to relax you into working, get your blood moving and put you in the right frame of mind to just get stuck in.

Plaster boarding

We did get time to have a brew break and then it was onwards to put new plasterboard up on the studwork. I have done this before but it does show just how quickly you forget your skills with lack of practice. It took until after lunch to plasterboard the whole area, something once I would have done in an hour, but I did get back into the swing of it over time.

Mmmm hot chocolate

One of the other students, who is actually a builder, did get the complete bay boarded by lunch and so he headed off early.

Acro Prop holding the ceiling up

I managed to finish by about 2pm and so was able to get back home in time to watch England win at Rugby - always a good thing.

Sunday started about the same, arriving slightly early and sitting with Alex in Thomas with the heater on. This time, however, we were actually going to be doing some Plastering.

My first attempt at plastering

First of all Len showed us how to do the mix. Then he went to one of the previously plastered walls and showed us some tricks. Then we were each given half a wall and told "give it a go". I will not go into all the tips that we were given (it would take too long and anyway if you want to learn, you go book on!) but suffice to say I was impressed with the way which Len showed us something, then presumed that we would be competent to give it a go.

First ever full skim

A good example of this was, after our short practice on the other people's wall, we were told "right go and mix up your own plaster and set to on that half of your own wall". I actually did the second lot but by the end of the day everyone had wielded the mixer tool, scraped around the outside with the bucket-trowel and washed out the plaster bucket once the load had been used up (OK I did that last a few times; what can I say I ended up finishing things relatively quickly and hate standing around).

One part of the day which was really awesome was 11am when, at the end of the morning coffee break, we all observed the 2 minutes silence for Remembrance Sunday. It was good that such respect is shown so willingly by a group of people from such a disparate background.

By lunch time on the Sunday I had plastered half of the big wall and learned SO MUCH. I was struggling to put enough thickness on the wall and then, during the smoothing out process my trowel angle was wrong which was scraping plaster off the wall rather than just smoothing it onto the wall.

Alex fitting his plug socket

A short lunch break (then a crowd watching Alex cut out and fit his plug the hole for which we will repair next weekend) and onto the next step; plastering the ceiling.

Mixing the plaster

I don't know why, maybe because of the practice from the morning, but I felt much more confident doing this. I still made the same mistakes of scraping too much off because of the trowel angle but my initial load was much more what I should be aiming for.

Just a little dirty....

After a short brew break we were back to our bays to do the final smooth and then cleaning and tidying to leave the unit safe and ready for any midweek courses which are booked.

And me (caught by surprise)

Our overalls were no longer clean by the stage and much amusement again when the course leaders took both our photographs as part of a "before" and "after" montage for their website.

I managed to avoid getting anything in my beard but Alex wasn't quite so lucky.

My bay at the end of the weekend

So now I am really looking forward to next week; we will finish off the plastering in the bay, learning how to join two plastered areas and then on the Sunday do a second skim, where you have to do things much quicker as the plaster goes off fast when it is being put onto other old plaster.

The instructions

I cannot wait.

With thanks to Alex for a few of these pictures :)