I frequently refer to plastering as what I consider to be the most skilful job in the building trade [and I just learnt that all my life I’ve been misspelling skilful with a double “L” – live and learn]. So, as well as being surprised that it’s “skilful”, I was surprised when our Builder Man declared plastering to be easy. Right.
Well, he clearly found it easy and set about proving it to me today by plastering our two new ceilings. He’s also done the plaster coat over the roughcast where the kitchen door used to be.
Most interesting was his special equipment for the task. His special equipment may be necessary to enable quite rapid movement around the room while covering the ceiling, where moving a modest step ladder about might prove too restrictive. He wandered freely about the space walking on what can only be described as stilts. They may have a technical name but I don’t know it. [No, just looked on Amazon and they are, indeed, stilts.]
Couldn’t he be a skillful American plasterer or a skilled plasterer?
I asked our last plasterer why he wasn’t using stilts to do the ceiling. “Not after last time,” he said. Of course I never did know what happened “last time”. But I can imagine…
Well now, there’s interesting. Websters says “skilful, also skillful” but Chambers does not, only “skilful”. Usually it’s Amerispeak that drops a double-L (canceled instead of cancelled, usually of IBM print jobs). I much prefer to look of skillful, I must say. Confusing.
Skilled is correct on both sides of the pond.