A Ceiling Collapse, a Deadline, and a Clean Roof

Day twenty-five. (Day 23 vanished into a full day of trowel work on those hostile corridor bays; day 24 we rested.) Tomorrow, at last, the tiles arrive — today was about being ready.

The collapse. The urgency was underlined by an incident: a section of the annex ceiling came down. Inspection showed rain exposure and age had left parts of the old finish so brittle they fell at a tap. Rather than patch the unstable areas, we stripped them deliberately and repacked the voids — battens laid crosswise, urethane foam locking everything tight. The annex ceiling will now get the full foam-board insulation treatment like the rest of the house. A collapse forced a decision we should have made anyway.

Clearing the roof. The tiling company’s request was simple: a completely clean roof. So everything came off — the rain tarps, the plastic sheeting, the pipes that had weighted them down, every scrap of debris from weeks of repairs. Last-chance thinking applied to the remaining holes too: once tiles cover the roof, these voids become unreachable. We packed them one final time, thoroughly.

Making cement stick to history. The day’s plastering — around the eaves and the patched ceiling zones — ran into a familiar enemy: fresh cement sliding off the ancient dry clay instead of bonding. The field method that emerged:

1. Mist the clay with a spray bottle — a damp surface grabs; a dry one repels
2. Pre-fill the big voids with urethane foam or foam-board scraps
3. Then plaster — one bag of X18 went on far more cooperatively

For ambiguous surfaces, a thin cement-and-water slurry brushed on first acts as a bonding primer. All of today’s plaster was rough first-coat by intention — building the base that finish coats can trust.

Tomorrow the roof starts becoming a roof again.