The building was only half constructed — the walls unpainted, the plaster chipping away, the plumbing unfinished.
The plaster is chipping now.
He closed the joints in the kitchen ceiling with masking tape and stuck duct tape over crumbly cracks on the plaster walls and chipping lead paint on windowsills.
In March, Kershaw and a team of workmen chopped through thick layers of plaster with small chipping drills, revealing the outlines of the oculi.
Every conceivable surface has been decked with sequins, spattered with colored lights, plastered in mirrored chips or trimmed in feathers and fringe in "Priscilla Queen of the Desert," the new musical that shimmied open Sunday night at the Palace Theater.
Daniel Chester French, the sculptor best known for the saddened seated president portrayed in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, lived tidily in studios full of plaster dust and stone chips.
Be certain to remove any chips of plaster which will not fire well.
So the work was about excavation: peeling off layers of wallpaper, linoleum and beaverboard, chipping off plaster and paint.
They held off on a costly renovation until last year, working with the architect Calvert Wright to add an open kitchen with mile-long views onto the back of the house ("We'll never get back what we put in," McCollough says with a shrug) and a modest design studio in the driveway, where they can freely tack drawings and swatches and inspiration on the walls without fear of chipping the plaster.
"From under my desk, I watched a hail of concrete, rock, chips, brick and plaster falling from the upper floors.
