
Just for this weekend I abandoned my plans for housekeeping domination and decided to spent a good chunk of time finishing off a couple of outstanding jobs at Steel Towers.
I decided on Friday that as long as there wasn't a torrential downpour the next day, I would spend Saturday afternoon finishing the fence painting out the front. I think I got more wood preservative on me, but after 4.5 hours the fencing was complete by late afternoon.
Quick pitstop for an espresso...

...and I decided the time had come to get back upstairs and start on the back bedroom again. All the walls in house have plaster in various states of disrepair. In some places it has blown and fallen out, in others it is crumbling and needs stabilising. However the majority just has crazing which can be filled with a good basecoat of paint containing an elastic polymer and with the added bonus I can easily see what cracks needed to be dug out and filled.
Unfortunately it was not to be. I was denied.
From the second I started rollering the stuff on I could tell all was not well. The paint wouldn't stick to the walls. More than one swipe of the roller over one spot and the stuff started to lift off. I perservered for about half a wall and then gave up in disgust when I realised why.
The cowboys that used to own this house had painted the walls with diluted glue (PVA), presumably because they thought that was how you sealed plaster. You NEVER, EVER put glue - diluted or otherwise - on a wall to seal and prime new plaster or to 'help' wallpaper move around while you are hanging it. Two things happen. First of all, PVA is water based and will reactivate on contact with any substance containing water, such as wallpaper paste or paint, rendering the whole thing a bloody mess. Second, if by some miracle you do get the paint on relatively successfully the paint has nothing to cling onto so it sits there hovering above the PVA layer until some time later - sometimes weeks, usually months - it peels off.
Even worse was to follow.It became clear on closer inspection of the ceiling that the paint was simply lifting off in chunks because they had also used glue on it too. So our previously painted ceiling was starting to come away in sheets. Dear God did I swear profusely.
On the wall, I have to scrape off the whole bloody mess and reclean the area with white spirit. I'll have to forgo the basecoat and fill in the worst holes and cracks by eye, and then simply wallpaper over. But the ceiling will have to be stripped back. I can actually slide a wallpaper scraper between the ceiling and paint and it simply comes away. If I want anything to stick to that ceiling, I'm going to have to sand the plaster, paint using an oil-based undercoat and then emulsion. Very messy and time-consuming.
Either way, the Cowboy Former Owners are still with us after being here nearly seven years. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest their butts for what they've done to this house in their ignorance.
I was so upset I went into the kitchen and cooked visciously for 90 minutes to calm down. You can tell it was a bit viscious by the jam slopped out over the edge of the tarts where I'd thrown it in. From height. At speed.

And yes there was a slight problemo with the jam roly-poly as well, but nothing cramming it into my mouth didn't fix...