Work for a rainy day

I think it's been raining almost solidly since November introduced itself.  Anyhow we have had a lot of water recently and it continued today so it seemed a good opportunity to get stuck into one of those jobs that one puts off until a rainy day.

View from the staircase

About two years ago we had English plaster applied to our hall and staircase walls.  Well, actually it goes something like this:  Lafarge, a French company,  who bought out Blue Circle Cement, produces the plaster and as far as I understand this plaster is not available in France.  I may be wrong on this point but my English plasterers assured me this was the case and I have never seen it for sale here.  I suppose one might call it "Europlaster".   It seemed the only sensible solution to put on our walls if white paint was going to be applied to the walls as a final finish.  We were aware that heat causes the plaster to contract and split particularly when there is not a good key.  The interior walls in our house, and I suspect in many French houses of this era (about 1840ish) are constructed with a wooden framework.  The infill is made of a red clay briquette, which is quite fragile and as far as I'm aware has no heat retaining qualities.  There is no problem in getting the new plaster to adhere to the briquette initially but with the central heating a drying effect causes expansion and contraction so that after a period of time the plaster detaches itself from the wood.  A solution suggested by our plasterers was to apply a scrim material to the wood before plastering.  This was done but has not proved satisfactory.    The plaster, after one season of B&B activity, became "blown" and in need of some attention so today I found myself up a large pair of steps in our inner hallway armed with a small hammer and old chisel picking of the old plaster where it had blown. 

L'Hexagon ou non?

I have now prepared the area around the damaged bits where the wooden frame had been plastered over, sanding down the wood and applying PVA glue to the old plasterwork in readiness for tomorrow's attempt at a bit of layman's plastering.  I will keep you informed of the progress.