The plasterers have made tremendous progress over the past week. Work in the office and hall has been completed and the dining room and the parlor are set to be completed either by the end of this week or early next week. Some walls were so badly damaged due to the house settling that large sections of plaster had to be removed.
Below are images of how the walls and ceilings have been prepared for plaster. One method involves putting down a primer coat (the pink stuff) and a fine mesh over large cracks to give the new plaster something to cling to. The ceilings in the dining room and the upper hall were so fragile that they decided that the best course of action was to put a stabilizing metal mesh over the whole surface and then put plaster over the mesh. Those ceilings will be about a quarter inch lower, but much stronger than they were before the repair.