I am renovating an old stone house built in 1818. I have a couple of questions.
Firstly the old chimney has been removed leaving only the inside of the chimney conduit exposed showing all the sooty bricks. It is thickly caked on and very tough, almost shiny in places.
Can someone tell me the best way to render or plaster this wall? Should I first strip off all the caked soot with machine strippers or sand blaster or something? or can I just render/plaster straight over the soot?
It is an internal supporting wall so I don't need insulation on it, but I would like it to be visible so it does need to be finished nicely.
Secondly I have some concreting which has been done to finish an old doorway and a new window opening and I'd like to render the surface of the concrete to make it a nicer colour with a more uniform surface finish. I have both external and internal parts of this concrete to render/plaster. Can someone tell me what mix I should use to render it both inside and outside? I've never done any rendering before so I'm a total beginner.
Thanks for any help.
Firstly the old chimney has been removed leaving only the inside of the chimney conduit exposed showing all the sooty bricks. It is thickly caked on and very tough, almost shiny in places.
Can someone tell me the best way to render or plaster this wall? Should I first strip off all the caked soot with machine strippers or sand blaster or something? or can I just render/plaster straight over the soot?
It is an internal supporting wall so I don't need insulation on it, but I would like it to be visible so it does need to be finished nicely.
Secondly I have some concreting which has been done to finish an old doorway and a new window opening and I'd like to render the surface of the concrete to make it a nicer colour with a more uniform surface finish. I have both external and internal parts of this concrete to render/plaster. Can someone tell me what mix I should use to render it both inside and outside? I've never done any rendering before so I'm a total beginner.
Thanks for any help.