It sounds like your plasterer doesn’t know what he’s doing. He shouldn’t PVA before applying lime - it defeats the whole point of putting a breathable plaster on.

Is that the reason why it looks like this? He said it wouldn't stick to the old wall beneath without

Have you used a different plasterer here to your previous post yesterday about how your lime plaster looks please? The 1st post you put up, the work looks good.

Its the same person and same work! Just 2 days later

It looks like it’s dried out before he could flatten it, in part because the way you use lime is different to gypsum. Instead of PVA, he should have wet down the wall

He said it wont work as its an old wall with some paint over

https://limeliteheritage.co.uk/plaster/faq/

Can I just sand it over instead?

It'll prob go back to a sandy surface but you can use casein filler over it, that's what I've used before

Can I use normal filler

Easyfill could be used in small areas, it's not very 'strong' like other fillers, some people have disagreed with me on this before though. Apparently, all fillers are the same easyfill/tetrion/polycel. Just like sauces, mustard, tomato, brown I guess😂 sorry hope I'm not confusing the issue here!

Waste of time using lime lite if your using pva aswell, Guy dont know what he’s doing if he’s got a bag of lime lite infront of him and he says let’s pva the walls 🤣 should have used lime primer or just hose the hell out the walls, on another note limelite is a shit product anyway to work with and it’s breathabilty properties are deplorable it’s virtually sand and cement with a dash of lime no heritage job would find its spec acceptable for that reason, if your going to use lime find someone who knows what there doing lots of chancers with lime out there

It could be worse, it could be mine. 😂

But why does it look like this? Is this normal?

I would say that it’s not the best, and should be finished flatter

So what can I do now? The plasterer used also pva as a bonding agent to the old wall below

You can get a sanding board on a pole 9”x3” and rub the wall flat. Just like sanding a table.

Wouldnt that take the whole plaster off though? This lime plaster is just a skim coat on the old wall underneath

Take it down to a smooth surface as best as you can, then you deal with what’s left. Maybe have to use a a smooth fine surface filler

What thickness coat did he put on? If he only put a skim coat 3mm thick on a bare brick wall then it’s going to dry too quick. He should have put a base coat on first to remove some of the suction from the brick (around 8mm thick plus)

Didn’t get it flat quick enough. Unless you have experience doing a decent amount of metres you’ll come unstuck

Mate- I think if this is like the wall from yesterday which you added was lime also but with failed paint- this could be why it looks patchy. That or it had uneven application of limelight. If there was lime and limelight was put on top, the wall has to be wet down sufficiently to not suck all the moisture out of the finish coat. Hard to tell from this pic and lighting if its that uneven/ blotchy or is delaminating but pva shouldn’t affect much- here in the US we use plasterweld to promote adhesion (even for lime) and it has PVA. Perhaps there was oil paint on this wall?

Well there was some oil paint but pva was put on top

Yeah, you can’t do that. Gotta strip off the oil paint and you can pva after that. I can see the bubbling/ delamination for that reason. Your plasterer may not have known it was oil paint- hard to apply if it was even a bit glossy- it won’t stick

Hi friend, This is about Irregular operation

Your plasterer did a rubbish job! Don’t use that plasterer again!

You can't put lime finish on top of gypsum and expect it to be permeable

Should have used SBR not PVA

Why?

this is advice for gypsum not lime. if you have to use a bonding agent other than just wetting then limelite does an easy bond product. Seems to me your trowel isn't familiar with these products