Plastering a wall is the same as plastering a ceiling.

If the wall has been painted you need to seal the wall with PVA and water.  The PVA water ratio will be on the back of the PVA tub.  We seal the wall to control the suction.  If we didn’t seal it and just put plaster on straight away, the wall could suck all of the moisture out of the plaster too quickly, causing it to crack.

Once the wall has been sealed and dried we glue the wall with a stronger ratio of PVA to water.  Once the glue feels tacky, start applying your first skim coat.  Don’t worry about neatness, just get it on quickly….not too thin though.  When you’ve finished the wall you can go back to the start position and smooth over the plaster.  This is known as trowelling out.  Again, you don’t have to be too fussy here…as long as the trowels lines are gone and it is relatively smooth it’s OK.

By now the plaster should be ’spongey’ to touch.  Mix up a new batch of finishing plaster, a little bit runnier than the first coat and go over it all again.

Once, it is spongey, trowel out until flat.  As the plaster hardens and it is now flat you can now use your water brush or better still use a water sprayer to get clean water onto the plaster and trowel out again.  Don’t use too much water though. 

Now go back to the start and trowel over it again, this time with a dry trowel.  Do another wet trowel with the water and another dry trowel to get a fantastic finished result.