A 16" Square Knockdown Texture Field Hand-Applied

This plumbing repair is over living room elegance. A leather couch is directly below.

After overnight setting of deep bonds, and drying of another overall surface coating of flexible grout, work a troweled pattern of texture, inward from edges. Flexible grout is hand-dabbed with a 3" flexible-blade trowel.

I brought a can of spray texture, but trying that would involve hours of masking the room. Here, I work only over drop cloths.

Two hours into this, and I am confident of success. 























Three hours in, with half of that in other patch refinement, I am done.  Good enough? We will see, after painting. 

Wall Header Sealing With Flexible Grout

This post is extracted from a Picasa web album:
Wall Header Gap Sealing 


This is typical flooding of a wall header in an attic floor, with very wet flexible grout. A spray bottle offers controlled wetting for slight dilution of the flexible grout paste. Gaps can be quite large, defying fill as a flood; then work mineral wool into the paste.

Here is a 3/8" gap. Tamp anything into it as a dam. Crown with wet flexible grout.

This is very-crummy sealing of a wall header by "the competition", using spray foam.

Under all the foam there was a negligible achievement of sealing. PTCS-trained fools also made a mess of a HVAC return header, with an awful and useless slathering of goop.

Here note that much wall header sealing can not be addressed by building gaskets set against drywall at the ceiling. Ooze flexible grout under nailer plates. Fill sometimes-large annuli of plumbing.

Please know that mineral wool dissolves nicely in water and in flexible grout, to serve as a thickener and extender.

Flexible grout is essential in patch-out of awful can lights. As I do prep in an attic floor, I must keep a ready kit for patching, that will never include dumb spray foam.

Here is an interesting can light patch-out in a tiled shower ceiling. This will be fully glued with flexible grout.

The so-hard flexible grout, non-shrinking, can be perfected almost as tile finish. Here a can-light wound will be hidden by a Cooper SLD6 LED plate light.

Still Focused on Attic Ladder Edges

The beveled edge into this attic ladder opening is perfectly formed all-around, by buttered-on flexible grout. Randomness matches the surrounding brocade texture.


Square-cut the drywall opening to the outside of the ladder frame, very carefully, and the job is easy.

Wanting an invisible stowed ladder.

Another Job Follow-Up, After Two Years

Please refer here to, mainly, a Picasa Web Album.

Heavy wallpaper can make for tolerance of badly-cracked plaster walls. Fixing the walls is a very large commitment. Here is initial revelation of a wall, using a steamer. Wallpaper removal must be complete. 


Please read on, at the album.

Patching a Failed Ceiling Drywall Seam

Drywall butt joints CAN be made to survive, without taping. Here is repair of a failed not-taped butt joint, in a house built in 1951. An uninterrupted crack ran the 24' length of a living room ceiling. One or several mud repairs, made matters worse.

1/31/2009, 10:59 AM. A failed patch of buttered-on setting mud was very tenacious. The 24-foot room length was a very good workout, with the whole body in controlled tension atop a ladder. I regret not having a picture of the further crack prep, slicing out a full-depth 3/32” vee. All scraping and cutting prep is with a 3” flexible straight-blade putty knife. Such blades are self-sharpening by the scraping process.

10:59 AM. Scraping reveals tear of the drywall tape along a butt seam perpendicular to the ceiling 2x6 framing. I think the pink is PlasterWeld, very ineffectively brushed into the butt joint. The joint is of rough ends (not tape edges), of drywall, with no covering tape.

11:00 AM. Scraping in process. This was two thirds of the job.

4:36 PM. The completed patch, filled with flexible grout.

2/1/2009, 3:04 PM. Spray texture completed. Some further fussing will be done with a damp sponge. This is not a true view of texturing through the box aperture, with box set on ladder a couple of feet from the ceiling. The box about 18” wide is generally twice the width of the stripe.

3:06 PM. The box and texture stripe, further back. The entertainment cabinet was draped. Spray did land with frequency on the tarps directly below, and a dozen dots were wiped from the floor farther out.

3:07 PM. Detail of the applied orangepeel texture is evident while it is wet. The spraying is very random, hard to control, much driven by waving the can upward. Blobs are adjusted by dabbing with a damp sponge. The dabbing is about half of the hour-long texture application.

3:08 PM. Tools of the repair. The groove was filled and surfaces blended smooth using 1/2 pound of flexible grout from the tub, with liberal spray of water. About half of the can of orangepeel texture was expended.

2/1/2009, 3:33 PM. Texture wider view without flash.

I guarantee my work indefinitely, and am never called with complaints. I asked for feedback, for reassurance of an interested  home owner in Omaha, at September, 2010. This customer, and the others, responded with compliments and kindness.

Please know I am eager for faster progress in sharing this product with the world. My scale remains tiny, with batches of a pound or two, lasting me for weeks. From tubs, without de-aeration, product remains workable for weeks, and I dispose of very little. I imagine best packaging will be with evacuated fill of caulk tubes. I will invest in larger scale, as demanded. 

Attic Ladder Edges, Always

Flexible Grout is useful in every one of my attic ladder installations. With variable condition of door face and ladder frame face, vs. ceiling plane, I never find advantage in use of edge molding. 

  

An Annular Patch, of Structolite and Flexible Grout

From the attic, I had seen a lot of light through a collar-hidden annulus of the wood stove flue ceiling penetration. Maximum gaps are about 5/8", and the ceiling drywall is fractured above face paper. I can't close the gap with flexible grout alone, over more than half the circumference. With this prep, the plaster securely bonds to the ceiling-set ring, and to drywall edges. Plasterweld would have almost no value here.