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     I was flown out to Seattle a few years ago to work on a house there. I stayed in a bed and breakfast while doing the work. The owner of the bed and breakfast approached me one day to see if I could help out on doing a plaster repair to a fireplace in one of the rooms. It was what they call a 'waterfall' style plaster that was done on the fireplace. There was quite a bit of water damage to the fireplace, and they had removed quite a large area, as you can see in the photos. They had filled in the open hole with wood lath and installed some nice heavy duty full coat corner beads at each end. I decided to help her out by doing the work on a Saturday morning.

• 1

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  Bare bones

  

• 2

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  Repairing the structure

  

• 3

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  Letting the bonder dry

  

• 4

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  Installing mesh to fuse the old with the new

  

• 5

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  Application of the base coat

  

• 6

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  Completed Project

  

• 7

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  Completed Project Drying

  

     The first thing I did was apply a latex bonder over the entire fireplace. This took about an hour to dry. I then decided to do this area in a traditional 'three coat' plaster application. I first applied a 'scratch coat' over the wood lath and filled in the corner beads with a first coat. This took about an hour to set up. I immediately followed this up with a base coat which I filled out to even with the existing surface. I embedded heavy fiberglass mesh where the old met the new, to give it some strength and to reinforce the plaster. I then gave the entire area a skim coat of base and feathered it out with a wet sponge.

     Once this set up, it was time for a finish coat. I coated the entire fireplace with a smooth coat finish, then applied heavy blobs of texture to match the original finish. As this finish plaster began to set hard, I used a sponge and brush to 'age' it to match in nicely. I took a picture of the finished fireplace the next day, which shows it already drying out from the top down.

     The entire project took about four hours to complete from start to finish. I was glad to help out, and the owner of the bed and breakfast was delighted with the finished work as well!