Hi, I am doing a dining room in frescanova. I did 1 and 1/2 walls in bucket A of prontomuro and the rest with bucket B. I applied the scratch coat. When I went to check on it the next day the area with bucket A was very modeled but bucket B looked like suede. What do I need to do to make the walls look even. Each is nice but VERY different.

Hello Ayn,

First are you sure that both buckets were pronto s?
2ed did you darby out the walls the same?
3rd if by scratch coat you mean the pronto? More then likely it wont make a diffrence with your finish coat. Unless of course when you run your hand over the surface, there is a real noticeable diffrence?

4th if by scratch coat you mean the first coat of plaster, maybe you blew the application?

I haven't worked with frescanova so I can't offer too much on that one.

Hope it helps.

I didn't darby. I can see an exact line where the second bucket took over. Frescanova is 2 1/2 coats calcenova over prontomuro. By scratch coat I mean the first coat of calcenova that I let dry over night. I don't know whether to start again of will the next 2 coats of calcenova wash out the problem.

I've done frescanova before. Its actually very
simple. I've done a ton of marmarino which does cover weird stuff like dry wall texture showing through. I am just worried that calcenova is so thin that it will show through. Or possibly if the 2nd and 3rd coats of calcenova are swirly enough they might hide what is underneath.

Ayn,

If you can obviously see a hard line from not darbying, and just trying to merge two sections together by simply hard troweling, you will likely see this demarcation after your calcenova cycle.

It is best to one, darby the prontomuro and two, don't leave a cold joint on an unfinished wall (if this is what happened, I wasn't clear on your initial post whether the half wall you did of prontomuro dried completely before switching to bucket b). It is best to complete one whole wall at a time before stopping, and even if you are switching to another bucket the darby will make the wall look even and consistent, the desired base for the fresconovo finish.

If you had only applied one coat of calce and you are seeing this line I would literally feather down the line with heavy grit sand paper or try scraping it down with a trowel or stiff putty knife.....if you are successful with this, you should be okay to detract the viewer from this soon to be very minor base plaster 'issue'.
You could then feather in some calce to cover what you had to level down, then proceed with the next 1 and 1/2 coats.

Greg

I went from bucket A to bucket B when it was
still wet. I rarely darby on top of textured dry wall if it was a lack of darby then all four wall would look the same. It was not a matter of a line but two walls look entirely different, one like suede (just slight modeling) one heavliy modeled. Will the next two coats of calcenova hide the variation or should I redo the whole thing?

Ayn, I get the picture now.... I had a similar issue when I did a textured fresconovo a while back. I went through one bucket of pronto and then moved to the next bucket. When the walls were dry I could see color differences between the 2 different buckets of prontomuro. I had a similar concern as to whether the fresconovo (calcenova in your case) would hide the color variations. It in fact did cover this up. I could not tell once the walls were completed.

I can say this: I wish I would have darbied the prontomuro because in the end,the amount of the grain showing from the prontomuro was only visible in some random areas.....this is due to the nature of compacting the material with the trowel (closing off)...most of the grain was closed off while in some random areas there was some grain that ended up opening up a bit. I was wanting to see more of the montovano look in the grain movement....and I learned the hard way that the darby is absolutely necessary for getting that effect.....opening up the aggregate.

I believe because the prontomuro was from different batches you are seeing some subtle differences from bucket to bucket....in other words, you are seeing subtle differences in your 'hand' because one of the buckets is closing off slightly different than the other, thus different types of modeling, the darby would have corrected this with a homogenous effect.



Greg

Ayn, are you positive both buckets were Pronto S?

I think I am going to be OK in the end. Fortunately, the clients are in Italy so the only person flipping out is me. Both buckets were prontomuro s. You are right that darbying next time will alleviate this problem.

Hey Greg, I just looked at your web site. Nice job. Guess what...I am a classical guitar player too! Carcassi, Sor, Brower etc..but my fav is Bach. I actually own a guitar made by Mike Dezavale who owned a classical guitar store in Sante Fe.

Ayn, that's cool you play guitar too. I have an arrangement of Bach that is in a dropped tuning. It is a cello prelude, forgot the number though.... the tuning is DGCGCD. I'm about to completely start over with my website because I need to focus more on just pictures, music and movies....I haven't had it updated in 3 years, since it was built. Basically, my friend built it for me but he is kind of lazy when it comes to updates so I want to look for something that I can have set up and update myself.

I find nothing more relaxing than playing Ferdinando Carulli, spanish guitar is my second love.

Ivan
www.bjdecor.com

I agree, music is so therapeutic.....it goes great with the ideas that flow from plastering walls.

I couldn't agree more. I also play the ukulele and love to do Bach on it. BTW...the woalls worked out. Can't tell at all. Will still darby in the future.

Glad to hear the walls worked out....