Living Room and Dining Room: Look Up!

You'll remember that Nick did the ceiling skim coating in both bedrooms. He did a fine job, but it was difficult and we anticipated that the cove ceilings in the living room and dining room would be particularly hard, especially given the severity of cracking in the plaster. We got a few price estimates and ended up selecting a guy who had strong Yelp reviews and also happened to be the low bidder (bonus!). As you may well know by now, I'm the "unskilled labor" half of this marriage, so it was on my list to dig out the plaster cracks and prime the ceiling. This prep work would save us a fair amount of money. I covered up my hair to protect from the falling plaster sand and took a selfie for documentation purposes. I think I look a bit like a man in this photo. It reminds me of my brother, which is weird.

Clinton? Is that you?

The guy we hired to do the repair prided himself on having done all the plaster work in a very famous local musician's house (ahem...Eddie Vedder). He brought a photo album of his work, explaining that Mr. Vedder didn't want to have any corners in his house...none. So every possible 90 degree angle was altered into a sweeping curve. It was really neat!

What happened here?

The result of the work was absolutely stunning. With the cracks repaired, the room stopped screaming. It said, "Thank you, let's all take a nap now." Nick scrutinized the work with his sharp eye and improved the repair just above the picture rail. Our hired man had worked quickly and the final bill was even lower than the bid. He had completed a long week on another previous job and was anxious to give his body a rest. That meant some extra effort on our part, but since we had more time than money, the arrangement suited us well. After Nick's QA work, we primed the ceiling using the soupy, but fantastic, shellac primer.