My advice is a bit different. There is a French plaster called Lutece 2000, sold widely. It comes in 2 versions, slow and fast (how quickly it ‘goes off’). Wonderful stuff to use and good results, even by me, a novice until I had used it. Buy a bag, a float and a hawk and have a go on one wall. Bag is in 33kg size.
I plastered about 130sq.m of walls and 16sq.m of ceiling.
OK, getting an ‘English’ supersmooth finish is quite an art, but I reckon my rustic finish is ok - I used the slow version and you do get 30 mins or so to keep wetting and ‘polishing’. In our small toilet (last room I did) I did achieve 99% supersmooth on the 2sq.m. plus 1sq.m ceiling.
Time comes - well, for me it has already come - when these 20-something kgs and more are out of the question. Esp at my place.
A door in a 4m high stone wall opens onto The Grotto, a chamber cut out of solid granite. Off The Grotto is The Precipice, a flight of one-person-and-very-little + wide steps cut into the side of the cliff - 4m to the garden level. There is another 3m+ elevation to come.
I ordered 2 x 10kgs tiling cement. When I went to the PO to collect it, it had “Très Lourd” writ large upon the one carton. They’d put the 2 by 10kgs in one box, of course
It’s a devil, getting anything delivered here. Before even getting to the door in the wall, drivers of the inevitable Luton or Master are faced with a sign, illuminated at night by a ring of flashing LEDs
It took 3 goes to get one 115 cm L venetian blind delivered. I finally got the seller to make sure the delivery company driver realised that when he got to that sign, he had to park, get out and walk the item 200m to my house.
In a word, Brexit!! Would have to import the plaster and pay customs and VAT. Anyway, it’s not clear whether this plasterer is authorised to work here at all.
In actual fact, @Jane_Hurst it’s not quite as straight forward as one might think.
Of course, there’s the “work-permit” situation… but there’s also the “unknown”.
French buildings are not like UK ones and what works well in a UK situation might be disastrous/hopeless in France.
Stone built houses in the UK, limestone granite etc used pretty much the same materials to bind and render, so no real difference. If the plasterer knows his trade?
But modern plasterers use gypsum plaster, very hard to find a lime plasterer in the UK. On a job I was on the idiot plasterer in the UK was told to lime plaster an old wall circa 1500ad, yes they said so they mixed a bag of lime with the gypsum!
It’s true, British plasterers only seem to know how to use one product, even in an area with lots of old stone buildings. If you want something other than gypsum then that often means getting in a specialist firm who do restoration work at a specialist price. If you can get them at all.
