Well after making the hole where the loose plaster was removed much larger, I thought before I go and try and fill it in with cement, that I'd fill it in with expanding foam, mainly so I didn't need an entire concrete mixer full of cement to fill in the gap. What I didn't realise was just how much the foam would expand after I'd squirted it into the gaps. Looks like I'll have to cut a lot of it away before I go ahead and fill it in with cement.
Having only been able to fill in this hole to half its depth, yesterday, I checked that the cement was now dry, having confirmed that it was, I thought it'd be relatively easy to fill in the rest of the hole so it was flush with the rest of the wall, what I missed was the fact the dry cement was now so dry that as soon as I applied new cement to the wall the moisture was almost immediately sucked out of the new cement and as I applied more cement it was causing some of the cement I'd just applied to fall off the wall, realising my mistake I found a plant sprayer and sprayed water onto the dry cement. This proved to be a winner and the rest of the cement I applied to fill in the hole stuck to the wall no problem.
Click here for a larger image.
Ohh, and the little patch below the larger hole is the one I had created when I removed the fixing from the wall. Now all filled in :).
Having learnt my lesson from the day before of trying to fill in a deep hole all in one go, I decided to not take the same approach with this hole, so I have given the large area where the plaster was removed with one coat of cement which has at least filled in the hole to about half the overall depth, in some places its probably filled it in all the way so it is now flush with the surrounding wall. Just needs another "coat" to get it flush with the rest of the wall.
Having exhausted the opportunities to continue cementing holes in the wall, well in all honesty, I had exhausted the strength in my arm to fill in any more holes. I decided to move onto stripping the paint from the woodwork in the room. I am quite happy to admit my wife has suggested we get the doors dipped so that they are at least clear of paint, but the thought of removing them all, getting them dipped and then rehanging them all doesn't fill me with a great deal of enthusiasm, how would I know which door went where!!. So I decided to do it the manual way and use a heat gun to warm up the paint and then scrape it off.
Even if I had to doors dipped, I'd still have all the other woodwork in the room to strip so to me it's not worth the hassle of removing all the doors, and then having to re-hang them all.
