Serenity Way, Noosa Heads

Marmorino Venetian plaster, built to depth by hand

Crafted Finishes applied marmorino Venetian plaster across five walls and a bulkhead in a penthouse on Serenity Way, Noosa Heads, built to depth by hand and burnished over sixteen hours.

The space came to us resolved. Crisp lines, square edges, every plane true. What it did not have was anything made by hand, and that absence is what made it read as sterile.

The brief was to ground it. To bring the natural world indoors and give the eye something to rest on that had not come off a production line. The answer was the perfect imperfection of lime plaster.

The finish

Venetian plaster covers a family of lime finishes. Marmorino is the member that reads as stone. The name is Italian for little marble, and that is exactly what it is: lime and crushed marble, laid in thin coats and worked with a trowel.

We used Rockcote Velvetina, made to the traditional Italian formulation in Yandina, just up the road from our workshop. We chose it because it builds thick and holds its shape, and on this project we intended to build very thick indeed.

The designer here also designed the Espresso Martini houseboat. The client had seen the marmorino we applied on that project in a rough split stone texture and asked for the same hand on his own walls. The instruction was simple. Maximum texture.

Building the depth

In the entry, the kitchen and across the bulkhead, the first coat went on at an even 1mm. The second coat is where the character lives, laid anywhere between nothing and 10mm depending on where it sat on the wall. Skip trowel and split stone. Undulations, misses and peaks.

What turns texture into a finish is the macro read. Standing back, seeing the wall whole, and deciding where it moves before a trowel goes near it.

The scope began at three walls. Two more were added while the first three were going up, once the client had seen them come to life. Five walls and a bulkhead, and every one of them carries a direction chosen for the room it sits in. The wall beside the front door moves inward, drawing guests through the threshold. The media room wall opens toward the screen, so the room resolves on its hero. Each stroke was placed with an intention behind it.

Where the texture holds back

The bedroom and the media room were not built to the same depth.

Maximum texture belongs where the eye lands and keeps moving. An entry. A kitchen. A bulkhead you walk beneath. In a room made for sitting still, that much relief competes with the reason the room exists. So those walls were laid calmer, with the movement carried in soft cloud rather than peaks, and the same lime and marble reading quieter.

Same product, same hand, same direction running through the room. Less depth, because less depth was what those rooms were asking for.

The burnish

With the second coat down, we burnish the top layer. The trowel compresses the lime and marble particles and brings a shine up across the peaks.

This is what people are responding to when they respond to Venetian plaster. The compressed areas read darker and hold the light. The lower areas the trowel never reached stay lighter and matte. The wall gains depth in both colour and sheen, and it changes as you walk past it.

Sixteen hours

Burnishing has a window. The plaster has to have started to dry without having finished drying, and that window is short.

On a flat wall you get one window. On a wall carrying 1mm in one place, 3mm beside it and 10mm above that, every thickness reaches its window at a different time. We laid the product in the morning and returned to it through the day, burnishing each area as it came ready. The deepest sections reached their window sixteen hours later, at two in the morning.

We were there for them.

A finish like this is not a product decision. It is a series of decisions made standing in front of the wall, across every hour the material gives you.

Project details

Location Serenity Way, Noosa Heads

Scope Five walls and a bulkhead

Finish Marmorino Venetian plaster, hand burnished. Split stone to the entry, kitchen and bulkhead. Low relief to the bedroom and media room.

Product Rockcote Velvetina, Yandina

Applied by Crafted Finishes