The Top 40

Right, find someone that can even apply a good scratch coat, much less trowel on a fine finish coat.

Even with rockers it is tough finding "GOOD" tapers, ones that don't spend forever putting on a proper blowout patch.

I don't use lime plaster, but, my original home has plaster walls. When we began to remodel and enlarge it, I wanted the new drywall to mimic the old. Over the past 20 years I have "plastered", with drywall mud, and using a trowel, my entire house, including the ceilings. I once had a painter remark that he didn't know professionals who did such work. I guess it was a labor of love.

VW is right. If you can find competent installers the cost is in the stratosphere, probably at least 5 times that of std drywall. And then there's the ongoing maintenance issues. There's a reason plaster has mostly become extinct. Having said that, I'm not elated over drywall either. I'm designing our next home and there will be some creative ideas employed in the field of interior wall finishes.

I have renovated a number of houses built around 1900. All lathe and plaster, and a lot of it still intact some eighty - ninety years later.

Elaborate ceiling medallions, so forth. If you commented on the quality of the work back then they'd go "What? What? That's the way we did all the work, just the standard job, one house after another."