Living Room & Dining Room: Texturing...OR Cracking Up About Walls

Goodness, friends! Apologies for the delay in posting. In real-time, Christmas preparation and travel kept us occupied for the last two weeks. I hope you were also sufficiently busy and didn't notice my absence.

Continuing on...with the ceilings renewed, the walls were next on the list. Adding texture in the bedrooms and hallway was relatively easy since they were previously smooth. For the living room and dining room, we were challenged to attempt to match the existing heavy texture in places where the plaster required repair. Either side of the fireplace had cracked badly. We ended up scraping off a large amount of loose plaster on the right side (bottom circle on left photo--that's just the start of the scraping). I primed the area and applied the first course of drywall mud and then Nick took over and made it look nice.

Hard to see, but these are cracked areas.	Repaired!

In our earlier texturing, we used a crow's feet brush to create the desired look. Our plaster guy tipped us off that the texture in the living room was created by squishing two drywall hawks together with mud in between and then pulling them apart and applying the hawk to the wall and knocking it down with a trowel. After some practice, Nick came up with a technique that was as close as we could come. As I recall, we didn't knock down at all. Instead, once the patched area dried, Nick gently wiped it with a damp sponge.

Textured, no knock-down.	Lightly sponged.

I can still tell where the repairs are, but it doesn't plague me. It's certainly much better than having cracks or living without sufficient electrical outlets. And, to stand back and take in the entire room, a person probably wouldn't focus on these areas.