Some more painting done

For the past few days I've been putting in a couple of hours painting - it's a relatively quiet activity that I can do at night as well (especially now that I have a 50W LED floodlight in the living room). I started with the bathroom and kitchen. The bathroom and all walls but the north wall (the one backing on to the corridor) of the kitchen are covered in fibreglass. Theoretically, it is possible to paint directly on to the slabs and practically it is better to plaster the slabs, but the fibreglass is actually a very good solution. It is considerably faster than plastering and has the huge advantage that it will not crack if there is movement in the slabs underneath. In our case, there very likely will be movement underneath, as the beams running on top of the internal partitions are also connected to the rafters. Thus, in a high wind, the roof will move, put pressure on the ceiling beams and this could be transferred down to the partitions - causing cracks in plaster or paint (the latter if the paint is applied directly to the slabs). There is already one significant crack in the paint. The kitchen north wall (the one without fibreglass) has a crack at the place where two slabs join. It isn't really a problem because it will be behind the kitchen block, but it goes to show, painting directly on to slabs might look ok (it does actually), but it isn't very stable.

After putting two coats of dispersion paint on the bathroom and kitchen walls I moved on to the living room. I have one coat on the partition walls (i.e. between living room and bathroom/kitchen) and two coats on the corridor (including the ceiling). I also have one coat on the south wall of the living room and have also put one coat on the reveals. Another thing that makes a lot of sense and which really enhances the final coat is sanding. Before the final coat, I decided to sand the subcoats of paint. Sven has a great machine called a "Giraffe",

which is connected to a big vacuum cleaner. The giraffe sands the wall and the dust is sucked directly into the vacuum cleaner. The result is a very smooth wall, ready to take the final coat of paint. Speaking of which, I now have the latex paint for the bathroom and the kitchen. I'm delaying applying it until I have new rollers. The good roller that I have can now only be used for the stipple finish on the plastered sections. I used it there and now there are tiny stones from the plaster in it - these make it impossible to paint the slabbed walls.