Plastering As a Career - Should You Become a Plasterer?

* Plaster cleans off much more easily when wet.

* Plastering equipment will usually need replacing if plaster is not cleaned off with water before it dries and this can get expensive and is wasteful.

* Any flecks of dried plaster in your buckets or on your equipment from previous sessions will later break off to contaminate future batches of plaster. This can spell disaster as these little gremlins will cause streaks or "pulls" in your finish causing you endless frustration and poor results.

* Contamination in new batches of plaster can result in the drying time of plaster being adversely affected as you will learn and this will cause chaos to applying the "Golden Formula" as used by most plasterers.

* Contaminated plaster can't be used and will need to be disposed of  costing time and money.

* A good tradesman is a tidy one and sloppy processes lead to sloppy work and unhappy customers.

To ensure a clean job you will need a good supply of clean fresh water. This can be a problem on some building sites where there is no running water. Also, because plaster and plasterers can get messy you should avoid using your own or your customer's kitchen sink where possible. Fill plenty of buckets of water in advance for mixing and cleaning and remember that plaster can block drains so avoid flushing too much plaster slurry down the drains. Dispose of water dirty with plaster down a main outdoor drain not a sink drain (we haven't yet written Mastering Plumbing!). In particular, always keep your buckets and trowel clean and ensure you only use perfectly clean water for mixing with plaster.  As a rule, if you wouldn't drink it don't use it for mixing plaster.

Only ever use clean and very fresh water for mixing plaster.  If you don't then your plaster will "go off" (i.e. set) to quickly and will need to be discarded. So, as a rule...

* Never use plaster that is going off - plaster is cheap so throw it away and start again.

* Never use plaster that is contaminated with anything.

3. Allow yourself the time to get the job done:

Plastering actually progresses a lot quicker than many people imagine but it still takes time. A large part of your time will be setting up and cleaning away so plastering is not the kind of thing you can spend the odd hour on here and there. You really need at least a half day (3 to 4 hours) at it to make up for the time it takes to mix the plaster, cover and finish your wall or walls and then clean and tidy away. My advice is to allow at least 2 to 3 hours for the plastering (the time required for a typical wall as a beginner) and an hour either way for set up and clean up. So, to give you an idea, yes you can get home from work at night and make some progress on your walls right after your dinner but expect to be washing out your gear at midnight! But hey, its better than watching TV so don't let me stop you. Better still allow yourself a full weekend to have a chance to get a whole room done as a total beginner.