The Glidwall process

*** There’s a lot traffic from people seeking information about Glidwall. I’m curious to know what you’re looking? Any feedback would be helpful.

I also describe the process at the bottom of this posting

Thanks, Mark

Here in Cincinnati, it’s somewhat common to restore old plaster walls with a product called Glidwall. It got its name from the Glidden paint manufacturing company. Originally designed to be imbedded with a paint-like product though I’ve never seen any contractor use anything other than joint compound also known as ‘mud’ (the material used to fill in and make smooth the plaster boards we commonly use in the United States).

There is a hint of the shape that will emerge when the process is completed.

I will make another wall shape beginning at the top of the stairs, it will running down the long hallway. In a future posting you see the finished shape made with a blue-tinted plaster. Because the lime coat adhered well, I left it in place unlike behind the plaster circle, but because of the cracks and compromised original plaster, I used Glidwall to recondition the wall surface.

First I put a bed of ‘mud’ over the area to be Glidwall-ed.

Close to a meter wide, Glid-wall is a thin randomly woven fiberglass sheet.

Placing the Glid-wall over the ‘mud’.

Then place more ‘mud’ on top.

Working my way down the hall… The white line is where I’ll transition the ‘shape’ (above line) and where I’ll remove the lime coat to expose the stucco like ‘brown’ coat (below line).

Super exciting stuff, right?!!… thanks for being patient. And for those who can’t get enough, please read on…

I wanted to write about this process because I’ve seen a number of contractors on job-sites using Glidwall and everyone does it differently, which I find fascinating. Here’s how I generally do it: I thin down a bucket of ‘mud’ with close to a gallon of water and use a one inch roller cover and roll the mud onto the wall/ceiling. First I roll on a ‘bed’ coat, then place Glid-wall immediately followed by another rolled on coat primarily to saturate the fiberglass and keep it from getting airborne. I use a plasterer’s trowel to ‘bed’ the Glidwall. I wait a day then roll on a ‘fill’ coat. I trowel it flat without removing any ‘mud’, this hides the Glidwall texture. On the following day I roll on a ‘strike’ coat. I use a 24 inch drywall knife pulling off most of the ‘mud’ leaving a nearly sand free surface. Much of the process depends on speed, timing, and feel.

One cool trick is to tape off the base and case then during the final ‘strike’ coat brush  super thinned down mud over the tape to soften any previous mud making it easy to pull the tape off, otherwise it can be a real pain when dry. Also use this mud with the brush to soften inside corners as you do the strike coat.

I used a plaster’s hawk and trowel in the above photo due to it being a relatively small project.