scattyme (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} scattyme) wrote,@ 2007-11-23 10:36:00 |
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Plaster
Quick-set plaster is like ice cream in reverse. You start off with pure slush and after five minutes it's become tractable, though still a little mushy. Then after another five minutes it's almost rock solid.
During that timespan you try to get it to do whatever it is you want it to do - in my case today, shoving it into the cracks between the old wooden boards in the ceiling of the gallery.
Above the boards somebody a long time ago put a thick layer of lime, and then tiles. The lime was probably good and solid for a while, but now it's turned back into powder and anytime one of the children upstairs runs through their front room, powdery stuff falls down onto our heads.
I don't mean to complain about this - the plastering is actually pleasant work when taken in small doses, particularly as I can listen to KPFA radio as I do so.
It seems magical to work with powder that eventually goes solid when you add water to it rather than getting more liquidy. There's something very satisfying about breaking the residual solid chunks off the spatula when you're getting ready to mix the next batch. How can they come off so cleanly and neatly when a few minutes before they were clingy, whiny, subservient sludge?
I imagine the cycle of solidified things in our house turning back into powder and then needing to be solidified again will continue indefinitely. I can picture people doing the same thing as I just did in, say, a century's time, in this house. That's assuming that Cluny is still a habitable place at that point, of course.
Quick-set plaster is like ice cream in reverse. You start off with pure slush and after five minutes it's become tractable, though still a little mushy. Then after another five minutes it's almost rock solid.
During that timespan you try to get it to do whatever it is you want it to do - in my case today, shoving it into the cracks between the old wooden boards in the ceiling of the gallery.
Above the boards somebody a long time ago put a thick layer of lime, and then tiles. The lime was probably good and solid for a while, but now it's turned back into powder and anytime one of the children upstairs runs through their front room, powdery stuff falls down onto our heads.
I don't mean to complain about this - the plastering is actually pleasant work when taken in small doses, particularly as I can listen to KPFA radio as I do so.
It seems magical to work with powder that eventually goes solid when you add water to it rather than getting more liquidy. There's something very satisfying about breaking the residual solid chunks off the spatula when you're getting ready to mix the next batch. How can they come off so cleanly and neatly when a few minutes before they were clingy, whiny, subservient sludge?
I imagine the cycle of solidified things in our house turning back into powder and then needing to be solidified again will continue indefinitely. I can picture people doing the same thing as I just did in, say, a century's time, in this house. That's assuming that Cluny is still a habitable place at that point, of course.
