The finishing coats of plastering (‘fina' which uses sand and is smooth,  ‘pollido’ which is pure cement + water and brushed on is much smoother) are much more interesting than the rough coat (‘rustico’) of plaster.

This process has gone very slow, primarily because I haven’t been around to manage it.  We lost Victor (he emigrated to the USA) but Benito’s cousin, Andres (also from Oaxaca), has taken his place.  While we had agreed that the final ‘fina’ plasterting of the 3 new domes would be mixed with a ‘sand’ coloring (added as a colored powder - ‘pulvo'- to  white cement while plastering over the ‘rough coat’) this wasn’t done.  So, the ‘Eli Dome’ now has the same finish as the Sunrise/kitchen dome complex - light grey. This type of surface can not be painted with a water-based paint, only an oil-based paint, not my preference getting color with such a toxic addition.  But we shall see.

Even though the Teen Dome wasn’t done with the ‘Arena’ coloring (sand) I decided to pursue it for the Bedroom/Bathroom domes, so we shall have a mix of exterior colors when this is complete.

Could I have had the workers ‘score’ the exterior Eli dome and add a roughening in order to add a final ‘fina’ coat of plastering, as promised by the contract? Sure, I could have, but the amount of labor to do that would have been enormous.  When I arrived, the very beginning of the interior platering of the Eli dome had just started (curiously happened on day of my arrival?). Well, they’d neglected to use the white cement that makes interior white - the ‘fina’ type at top and the ‘pollido’ style below the 'bag story’ were a drab grey color. See the grey?

This I wasn’t willing to tolerate, so had them re-do the pollido work and it was ~ 6 hours of efforts to undo the mistake. It was easy enough on the ‘fina’ (just a new coat) but they had to seriously ‘score/damage’ the grey-colored piollido in order to get a new layer of pollido to stick.  See a video of the intensity of this work here.

Considering how much labor would be required to do this ‘scoring’ to the entire exterior of Eli’s dome, to get a sand-coloring, wasn’t my idea of ‘fair’.

We’ve done ‘fina’ at top using white cement, and pollido using white cement at bottom.   After witnessing the result, I’ve decided to use Pegadoro as my whit pollido for the other 2 domes, as I believe the quality is better.  According to Chema (Jose Maria) that should take 2-3 weeks; acordiong to Andres, 4-5 weeks.  I know it would be done in 2 weeks if I stayed to assist.  

Notice pic at top has the ‘fina’ in white cement till below the tiles we start pollido - whihc requires a layer of fina;’ in order to apply the pollido.

When the pollido is wet, the lines connecting two days of work are obvious. As it dries, though, it all blends together

While we had the experts and materials, I worked with Benito to repair parts of the ‘sunrise’ dome that had fallen off or cracked in the last 16 years.

The Sunrise dome is back to wholesomeness :-)