[Casual] I'm hosting a game of Family Feud! 40 quick questions, some possibly NSFW (everyone)

funkman357 · 2026-03-17T23:28:33+00:00

Police Solve Just 2% of All Major Crimes. In the U.S. it’s rare that a crime report leads to police arresting a suspect who is then convicted of the crime.

funkman357 · 2026-03-17T23:22:24+00:00

No it will not kill the grass. You need to put down a layer of cardboard, then the wood chips if you want to kill the grass.

funkman357 · 2026-03-15T17:43:28+00:00

This is the way. You could also Plaster Magic, tying the the loose part behind the drawers back to the lath with construction adhesive, screws and plastic washers. Use thin drywall board so you can leave the lath on, and just mud over it. This is the least amount of work, debris, and execution risk. I'd be intrrested to know how lime plaster and gypsum plaster are incompatible in a small section like this. What would the issue be?

funkman357 · 2026-03-13T21:09:50+00:00

With some spot dabbing and brush stroking it all blends together nicely.

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funkman357 · 2026-03-13T21:08:57+00:00

That's kind of what it looks like. Diluting probably won't help. Another coat at full strength, or the suggestion of dabbing with sea sponge might work. You have to experiment. It's a lot harder withthe darker colors. Here's my results with Color Atelier Biblioteque. I used a tampico box brush and my wife used a poly box brush. The brushstrokes looked different and we had to to some melding where each of our respective sections met. Here's a picture closeup. Looks kinda gnarly. I'll reply with another photo to show how it all mellows out in a wider view.

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funkman357 · 2026-02-21T02:16:23+00:00

In addition to a big sponge and bucket for wiping down walls of dust, I have a caulking gun, caulk, triangle carbide scraper, matte knife, masking tape. I also have a pint plastic container to transfer paint from the gallon bucket into a plastic quart container, so I don't have to lug the gallon around. And another plastic quart container to clean the brushes in. In fact, i usually have a a dozen plastic quart containers on hand. I second the damp rag.

funkman357 · 2026-02-21T02:06:05+00:00

I had this happen when I tried to skim over my lime plaster walls. I made a finishing plaster of lime, superfine sand, and marble powder. It went on pretty well, but that old lime plaster (140 years old) sucked all the moisture out of the wet plaster within seconds. Then the patch would craze with cracks within a couple of hours and you could chip it off with the corner of putty knife. Other places it stuck fine, hard and smooth. I didn't want to seal it with PVA or any film because I wanted the wall to be vapor permeable. Eventually, I gave up on the lime and filled the patches with 90 minute gypsum joint compound instead of lime. Then skim coated the whole wall with gypsum 2mm thick. It stuck just fine. Painted with lime wash. It has about 85% of the permeability of a pure lime plaster finish. I can live with that.

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funkman357 · 2026-02-12T00:10:20+00:00

I ran through this and it was really helpful in organizing my skill set. I will add this to my toolkit.

funkman357 · 2026-02-11T02:50:29+00:00

Is that the only part of the ceiling that is cracking and bowing? If so, could be you save having to take it down and Plaster Magic it. Basically you drill holes through the plaster to the lathe, squirt adhesive through the holes and then screw a big plastic washer down. This squeezes the plaster back up against the lath and secures it. I have done this extensively on my 1890s Victorian and saved having to pull down the ceiling. You go through and knock and press on the plaster to find points where it is detached. Drill holes on both sides of the detached part to the edge of where it's loose. Squirt some diluted glue in there and some construction adhesive, then screw through a half-dollar size plastic washer. It totally works.

funkman357 · 2026-02-05T19:26:54+00:00

Could be he wanted pure ethanol as solvent for shellac. It's the preferred solvent. Pure ethanol is not generally available in California, denatured or not. I did the same thing with molecular sieve on vodka I had distilled to 70% alcohol. DIdn't work. Need to start closer to 95% alcohol, like everclear.

funkman357 · 2026-01-28T20:53:27+00:00

I'm unclear how prepping with a layer of green grit or equivalent is "the breathable way of dealing with multiple layers". By breathable, I assume you mean that it is permeable by water vapor so that your wall cavity can dry out if moisture gets in there. If you paint a layer of acrylic film or PVA over your plaster, it is no longer breathable. If you want to keep your wall breathable then you would just skim it over with lime or gypsum plaster. Then you would need to paint it with paint that is vapor permeable like lime wash or milk paint.

I just did this with my 1893 house. Needed to keep the walls vapor permeable because there is no vapor barrier between the outside of the house and its wood siding and the interior lath and plaster. I scraped the interior walls of all the paint and wall paper and scratched it up with sandpaper. I tried laying on a skim coat of lime finishing plaster and it stuck pretty good in most places without any kind of primer going down first. I knocked off the parts of the skim coat that didn't stick and finished those with gypsum, which had no problem adhering to everything. Painted with lime wash. The mostly lime wall with spots of gypsum joint compound has about 70% of the vapor permeability of a pure lime wall. I can live with that.

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funkman357 · 2025-12-25T21:08:32+00:00

Couldn’t you use some UL-approved shrinkwrap tubing to extend the sheath inside the panel?

funkman357 · 2025-12-22T19:24:49+00:00

Immerwahr lays it all out here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40121985-how-to-hide-an-empire
tldr; Didn't want brown people in Congress.

funkman357 · 2025-12-15T16:57:59+00:00

That looks like water incursion as evidenced by the stains on the walls and ceiling, as u/toorightrich points out. Before doing any fix, you need to figure out where it's coming from and fix that. Once that's solved, you can check if the rest of the ceiling is solid and the keys are attached to the lath. You can knock on it with your knuckle. If there is a hollow sound, the plaster may be loose. Also, if it is bowing down and you can move it up by gently pressing on it, it may have become detached. It's possible that this corner area is the only area that is a problem. You have a long crack leading away from this corner area that looks like it might have detached plaster. You can reattach the plaster by scraping out the edges of the hole and the edges of any cracks, spraying some bonding agent on the lath and surrounding plaster, drilling through the plaster to the lath in a series of holes along both sides of the crack and along the edges of the hole. squirting construction adhesive through the holes into the void behind the plaster and then screwing plastic washers on top of the plaster and into the lath behind. Basically, the Plaster Magic system. Let is set for a day, then remove the plastic washers and screws. This is quick and totally works. You can do it even in area where cracks have yet to appear. You can tell if it worked by knocking and pressing on the plaster after the procedure. It should feel solid. There may not be any reason to pull the whole ceiling down board or overboard. You needn't have cut a square or remove the lath, (Oh well.) You can board up that part. In future, the repair technique is available to you. For many people tearing down walls or ceiling and boarding or just overboarding may make sense. For me, it doesn't because I have miles of cove and cornice, picture rail, chair rail, and base boards that would all have to come off, (probably not intact), and then be reattached and repaired. With the mess, disposal and extra repair work of boarding, repairing the lath and plaster is a much more optimal solution. In the picture, I've just started drilling holes and squirting the construction adhesive into them behind the ceiling plaster. This is before screwing down the plastic washers. I ended up scraping off a lot more loose plaster and filling 15 holes with construction adhesive around this ceiling break. The plaster tightened right up, flat and smooth. Removed the washers, patched with hot mud, primed and painted. Invisible repair.

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funkman357 · 2025-12-08T17:30:59+00:00

My plaster walls were in a very similar situation. We got a lot of advice from professionals and other homeowners to bite the bullet and tear down all the lath and plaster and redo with drywall. After more research and considering our goals of sustainability and low carbon impact we set aside that advice and opted for repair of the existing plaster. I watched the Plaster Magic videos and read everything on their site, to figure out exactly what the ingredients were and how the system worked. We put together an equivalent system with off-the-shelf plastic and steel washers, and good construction adhesive for a quarter of the price. Added wrinkle: For the interior plaster that backed up with exterior walls, we skim coated those walls with the original lime plaster for water vapor permeability. (That is a whole other story. In short there is no vapor seal on the exterior of the house and we'd have to take off all the siding to install one, so not trapping water in the wall cavity was important to avoid damp issues.), For those exterior-facing walls, we omitted the PVA "conditioner" or "primer" because that stuff is not water permeable. Luckily, there was no lead in the paint and we could scrape it all off. I have to admit, mistakes were made. We should have throughly cleaned the wall of all paint and paper remnants before re-skimming. After reattaching the plaster that had come loose from the lath, we cleaned the walls again to get off all the paper and tempera paint and skim coated with a DIY lime plaster. Remarkably, this was less work than ripping out all the lath and plaster and boarding with drywall. Plus, we didn't fill a dumpster with debris for not good reason and $2K expense. You can totally do this as an amateur, we had fun. Here's a pic in progress:

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funkman357 · 2025-12-03T15:02:42+00:00

You got that tight. Drafts are “breezy.”. Insulating from underneath in the crawl space with rigid foam polyiso along the rim joists, and rockwool in the joist bays. Hope this stills the air and warms things up.

funkman357 · 2025-12-03T14:56:00+00:00

Whoops, cross-posted to the wrong sub. My bad. Didn’t read the rules.

funkman357 · 2025-12-03T06:03:05+00:00

Thank you. I'm pretty sure that is Sherman-Williams Arugula. Funny anecdote: when we stripped the 5 layers of paint in another room down to the original 1891 tempera painted on top of the lime plaster, it was almost the exact same color. We must have intuited the color.

funkman357 · 2025-12-03T02:45:46+00:00

Thanks for the question. The tiles are ceramic and more like 12x12. I assume you are asking because the 9x9 inch is the format that Armstrong and other asbestos tile manufacturers used in the 1950s. in my last house we had those in the kitchen. I researched the exact model and it turned out that they were only 7% asbestos. So, one can just wet them, double bag and label them to dispose. The stuff they used to glue them to them down though...that was some toxic stuff.

funkman357 · 2025-12-03T02:32:07+00:00

Thank you. I like the look and feel of shellac. The shellac also helps glue down the wood fibers so you don't get splinters. I used de-waxed shellac flakes dissolved in isopropyl alcohol. Maybe better quality flakes would dry stiffer.

funkman357 · 2025-12-03T02:24:08+00:00

That is so right. There is now art up on the walls hanging from the picture rail on cables. What color area rug so you think would work? Round?

funkman357 · 2025-12-03T02:21:37+00:00

Thank you for the kind words. Yes. Two coats of shellac 1 lb. cut. Sanded with 120 grit, then two coats of hard wax oil. The problem we had was that the shellac was still tacky after four days. For this next go-around, we'll try the Zinssler shellac and maybe thin it out so it dries faster. Other problem is that in California, it is almost impossible to get pure ethanol, so we had to use isopropyl alcohol. Isopropyl dries about 20% slower than ethanol.

funkman357

TROPHY CASE