Getting Plastered

Times sure have changed. When I was 10 years old, I hooked up with some friends and we rode our bikes 8 miles or so, through town, to get some ice cream sundaes. I simply cannot imagine letting my 10 year-old do that. Is that wrong?

Anyway, one of these friends was John Morris. (side note: there are few names better suited for a New England accent - Jyawn Mwahris. Wicked pissah.) Jyawn had this wicked cool Schwinn bicycle called the Orange Krate. This bike was radical in its day (which timeframe I am not at liberty to disclose). It had so many features, that I used to drool over it. First, it was painted bright neon orange, it had a cool orange banana seat with racing stripe, and it had orange stripes on the tires. The rear tire itself was a super-wide racing slick, and the fenders were all chromed out.


The front tire was smaller than the rear tire. It extended out farther than other bikes, and the handlebars were very high - all in the style of Easy Rider (which I hear had been a very popular movie WAY before this timeframe). And this is the REALLY cool part - it had a "suicide shifter" mounted on the cross rail. What kid wouldn't have lusted after this machine? Can you imagine that bike selling today? That shifter has lawsuit written all over it. Nope, the only way to own this baby is to buy one on eBay. In excellent condition, this bike goes these days for about $1,800 U.S. Go ahead - you know you want it. Just click on the picture and bid with confidence.


Anyway, ice cream sundaes must have agreed with John, 'cuz on the way back he decided we'd switch bicycles. I took the wheel of his glorious bicycle, and tore off down this long, long hill, hand on the shifter and wind in my hair. Right into the grill of an oncoming car. Hey, it wasn't my fault! Really.

See, in New England, all the roads have "soft shoulders", meaning they are made of soft dirt. The 95 year-old woman at the wheel of the oncoming car kept inching me closer and closer to the shoulder - it was probably a result of that phenomenon where you tend to steer toward whatever it is you are looking at. She obviously was transfixed in her lust for the Orange Krate.

Once I hit that soft sand, the result was inevitable. I swerved out into the road, directly into the path of the car. The bicycle went under it, and I went over it. I landed, arms and hands outstretched behind me, directly on my face, which I used to paint the blacktop for a good couple of yards or so.

The next thing I remember is some woman mopping the blood off my face with what seemed like sandpaper - it was actually a beach towel full of sand. They held me down until the ambulance came. Everyone in the family agrees that the fifty-one stitches produced a vast improvement in profile.

I was told that the little white-haired driver stopped, got out, and surveyed the scene: twisted piece of orange metal; tires rolling down the hill; a body lying lifeless and bloody on the pavement; people racing over to help. Alas, it was all too much for the poor old girl. She got back into her car and floored it.

Using a tag number, the police eventually tracked her down and found her car - it was parked behind her house with some large tree branches draped over it. Granted, she shouldn't have been driving, but that poor, poor woman - I feel bad that the last years of her life were filled with what must have been terrible angst. At any rate, the court case didn't come up for a couple of years. We were living in Virginia at the time, and I had to fly up to Salem, Ma. to testify. She never made it to court that day - she'd passed away. I'll never forgive myself for the role I played in that.

That night, we sought to drown our depression - John and another buddy and I hung out front of Kappy's Liquors on Main Street in Haverhill, Ma., trying to spot someone cool. We were all of 13 years old. We managed to talk a guy into buying us a case of beer, which we consumed with great haste. I don't remember much after that.

Next morning, my brother-in-law arrived super early to pick me up and take me to help him with a side-job sanding wood floors in an apartment building. I will never, ever forget that morning. I've not gotten plastered since.

Well, that kind of plastered anyway. I did make some progress on the venetian plaster this evening. This is a very easy technique that anyone can do. Just be aware that there is no turning back - once you plaster the wall, the only way to get back to a smooth wall is to tear it all down and replace it.

So you begin by smearing joint compound randomly onto the wall, like this...


Work in small areas (say, 4x10), so it doesn't have time to dry. Next, you raise the grain of it with a cement or tile trowel, like this. You are simply pushing the trowel into the compound, and pulling it back off. This can be done very rapidly, 'cuz it doesn't have to be perfect...


What you end up with should look something like this:


Then you start smoothing it out with a 6 inch putty knife. This is called a "knock-down" process. In fact, you can buy knock-down kits, but I think they produce a finish that is too uniform. Anyway, you're just knocking the rough texture down.


Because you'd put the compound on randomly and in "splotches", what you end up with is an overall aged plaster look, like this....


Finally, after its all dry, you sand it lightly with a pole sander - you're just trying to remove any lines left by the putty knife, and make everything smooth.


To finish, you paint with primer, then paint with a base color - in this case, kind of a beige. Then you brush on a glaze, let it dry a little, then dab it off with cheesecloth. I don't have pics of the finish technique yet, but will post them when I do. It really isn't that difficult. The only difficult part is keeping the leading edge of your work wet - but that's the case with any faux finish. This just means you have to work quickly, and you can't stop.

Anyway, the finished wall will look like this. On this wall, you can see that by dragging the edge of my putty knife through the wet compound, I created some faux "cracks".


More info to come.....

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postscript - Hey John, if you're still out there, I never really thanked you for letting me destroy your new bike. It was wicked pissah!