Finishing Right, Starting Left Return, Finishing Details.

With an abbreviated look at the continuing rubber coating the right return is done.



Then the same process is followed again making a form supporting backing with gypsum and fiberglass.

With a little dressing up of flaws to flat surfaces, filling dents and scraping off grits it is again time to wax the cornice, plus spraying with rubber release agent and continuing on with the left return. The all-threaded rods stick into the next piece leave a positioning indentation for reference, or extra grip until fasteners can be applied.

Rubber coating, this time with thixotropic filler stirred in at 5% by batch total weght, and a manufacturer's anti-tear fabric inserted, which works better than cheese-cloth, staying more stable while brushing on the rubber coatings. The process is improved in time saved by one day.

With the rubber coating going so well, I dress up the flaws around the egg & dart, where the rubber was first tested and paint the wall and gold color after a primer coat.

Before

Casting installed

After

I am also doing some carpentry in the form of decorative panel moulding laid out along the walls in a pattern we've derived very carefully, with some trial and error. In the small lulls in waiting for the rubber to partially vulcanised I've been setting up opperations for chopping the pre-painted moulding and assembling them on a rather large table before setting them up. Along the way I have found that the lower margin, while being mostly level, tapers from the west wall to the east by 5/8" of an inch. This will be tricky to hide. Tonight I took out the laser level and shimmed it until one line met up with the other. I will try to stagger the frames upward to the larger margin. The irregularities of the lower running mould in plaster also show a bit. Nothing to be done there.
Some idea of what it would look like was suggested during the early stages of our renovation:

So I drew from that.

After one trial and review with the margins at the originally planned six-inch spacing I tried again with a three-inch margin to match the decorative plaster ones set on the end pilasters.