General Rendering Tips For Beginners

Improve your technique with these tips from professional plasterers and renderers.

Rendering is a poorly understood element of decorating and its perceived difficulty means that even professional contractors often prefer to delegate the task to a rendering specialist. However it can actually be learnt very quickly and even a novice is capable of creating a professional finish.

Rendering is a 6-stage process and involves surface preparation, 2 layers of plaster, the skim coat, and the wet and dry troweling. It is much easier to learn the specific techniques for this work by watching a professional at work rather than by reading up on it and as such these techniques will not be explained here. This article instead includes general tips that will augment knowledge gained from videos found elsewhere on our site, making the process easier as a whole and improving results.

Keep Within Your Limits

Remember that a good finish comes from a speedy and well-timed progression through all 6 stages of the process and competence will improve gradually with experience. As a beginner you should initially limit yourself to smaller surface areas that will take approximately 30 minutes to cover in a single coat of plaster. Do not worry about making this coat perfect since it is only a foundation layer and later coats will build towards the final finish. Appreciating this will speed up the process and will actually also improve the results.

Preparing the Render

Creating the right mixture is not difficult and can be achieved by following a few basic guidelines. Firstly, the plaster should be added to clean and fresh water and not the other way around. Begin by adding enough powder so that it sits on to top of the water and then stir until any lumps have been dissolved. After this you can slowly continue adding plaster to the mix until it has a smooth consistency reminiscent of melting ice cream that does not slide off the trowel when held level, and a perfect mixture will support a stick placed vertically into it.

Preparing the Surface

Before you start it is important to ensure that the surface is free of damp, dirt and dust and that even the tiniest fragment of wallpaper and the like has been removed. The wall can then be prepared by covering it in a 3:1 mixture of PVA glue and water, though the exact proportions can vary depending on the type of plaster being used (advice on this can be found elsewhere). This is a good primer since it reduces the capacity of the wall to pull moisture out of the plaster, something that can make it brittle and mean it will quickly crumble off the surface. The plaster should then be applied while the primer still feels tacky rather than wet as this will help it bond to the wall.

Polishing

A good piece of advice is to never overdo the polishing of the final stage since this will stop paint and wallpaper from adhering to the wall and all your work will have been for nothing. It should instead have the look and touch of eggshell.

Clean As You Go

Cleaning as you go is as important here as it is in any kitchen restaurant since any contamination of the mixture will increase the speed that the plaster dries. And considering that for a beginner rendering is already a race against time to complete in the time frame available, any shortening of this window will reduce the quality of the finish.

Furthermore, if the station is not cleaned regularly small pieces of dried plaster will attach to your trowel and cause drag lines on the surface and this can be very frustrating, particularly when you are administering the finishing coat. As such it is essential to keep water, buckets and tools as clean as possible all the time. Integrating this early on in your technique means that over time cleaning will naturally integrate itself into your rendering technique.

Jamies is a DIY and is always on the look out for new home improvement tips and tricks. Follow him on Twitter @diyjames.