"My general contractor offered me to hang a drywall on top of plaster but I dont see a value of this." Oh for the love of God - I wish if people didn't know how to do something or it was outside their range of expertise they would just say so and not propose these ridiculous things that do more harm than good. So he adds more thickness with a layer of drywall - what does he do with the trim then? Rip it out and install skinny cheap modern trim from Home Depot (some do exactly that - ugghhhh) Sorry OP I just had to vent there!! Ive been looking at old houses to buy and theres no end of goofy, futzy things that people have done to them. Im glad you saw the folly of that esp in such an old house. Like fine antiques, as time goes on people more appreciate the old things - esp if well maintained in original condition. You may want to go over to thehistoricdistrict.org, which has many old house lovers on the forum including professionals who can advise in great detail about how to do plaster repair. Especially with your age of house - you might want to confirm what type of plaster you have . There was an earlier type of lime plaster with different composition with materials you might have to hunt for (but certainly are obtainable at reasonable cost) The later type of gypsum based plaster used in early-mid 1900s - materials not available at big box - I think Ace had a type of patching plaster that can work but the plaster of paris that they (and home depot) sells is not good - sets up way too fast and hard. Otherwise any small-mid size city should have a building supply store where they carry the more specialized types of materials - while traditionally plater walls had a three coat system, for repairing cracks Ive just used plain patching or veneer plaster - if a bigger hole you can get a rough coat plaster for first layer and veneer plaster for the top layer. Use a bonding agent on the edges of the old plaster and the lath to help the new plaster adhere well to the old. There's various other techniques for bigger areas and different types of situations - and other people will have their favorite methods and materials (some use drywall compound but IMHO if you have extensive repairs its best (and considerably cheaper) to get the real stuff. Re very fine surface hairline cracks - ignoring those works the best! In a nutshell - plaster repair is exactly the kind of labor intensive but very doable thing that a typical home owner can learn to do, and do well.

RM, Are you clear about the advice that Billl gave you? It sounds as if you might not be. What he said about the window frames sticking out 1/4" too far meant that the sides of the window frame (literally the sides of the window, that are at right angles to the sashes holding the glass, the sticking-out edges of which you can not see when the trim is in place) were (after he had replaced the plaster with sheet rock) deeper than the plane of the installed sheet rock. He could have used two or more layers of sheet rock to build up the depth equal to the old plaster, or as he chose to do, he planed these edges down to meet the sheet rock evenly. He was not talking about planing the visible trim which is installed on top of the edges of the window frame and extends from there over and on to the plaster or sheet rock. The window trim bridges (and conceals) the joint between the edges of the window frame and the wall surface. That's why the window trim sticks up proud (as it is called) from the wall. It can only provide this bridge if the edges of the window frame and the overall plane of the wall covering are even. There is an excellent book on windows ( Working Windows) by Terry Meany, that you might find useful in grappling with complex construction, and nomenclature, of window frames. And I have a suggestion, I'd recommend emulating your user name's approach. Do your homework and understand what to do, what not to do and how to do each before you try to engage handymen, or semi-skilled home repair persons. Whatever you do, don't rely on the "professional" advice from workers with less knowledge, affection, or experience in old house renovations than you have. There are excellent resources on line (of course, tons of crappy info online, too); good print resources on the curatorial care of old houses, and of course a wealth of free advice here and on similar old-house positive fora. (Old House Web and Historic Homeworks are two very helpful and knowledgeable sources - Google 'em and post questions.) When I was a new old house owner, I figured that most workers knew more about houses renovations than I did. Most did, but only a few knew more about old house renovations than I did, which was next to nothing, at first. Luckily, I didn't have too much money to do renos right away, so I was spared making mistakes by not being able to pay workers. In the meantime I made it my business to learn about how my buildings were put together and, what others had done with similar structures. When I was finally ready to embark, I knew that many of the things I might have blythely embarked upon were really bad ideas. The best thing you can do for your house is clean it, study it, and learn about it. Only then would I suggest getting involved with workers. What I suggest is both money-saving (which you'll need as good old house work is never cheap) and absorbs all that new-house-I-gotta-make-it-mine-energy that everybody has right after they close. The handyman who got upset about you wanting to save money by demoing is exactly why you need to learn more about houses before you hire workers. But, please, use your energies to scrub the floors, or dig a garden, or something else, instead of demoing right off the bat. It's not that hard (but a much bigger mess than you can ever imagine, though, and once started you have to see it through to conclusion) but don't use it as a catharsis. It must be done in a deliberate manner, (I really like the "deconstruction" approach noted above) after careful consideration of whether it is the right thing to do. Sometimes it is, sometimes not. Have you tried to remove the drywall from one small area to see what's underneath? Do you know by whom and under what circumstances it was installed? There may be some clues to be gained by investigating, or querying about it. Again, a case of the benefit of not just launching into it.

Yippee it worked. My thread is back. I had to go into my computer's history to find this thread. I had posted to it last week or so and it never re-appeared on the GW forum. Update: I fixed the large hole with plastic screen type lath, fastened up into the plaster with drywall screws. I couldn't reach one edge so I wedged in a 1x.5" piece of wood lath at one end and overlayed the plastic lath, and I think the screws are pegging the plastic screening in place :) There was a lot of technique getting that piece of plastic screening up there! Then I took Easysand 20 and filled the screening, it was ugly: After it dried for several days I took my "California Patch" and slathered a bunch more Easysand 20 on it and wedged it in place. It stayed! It is drying now. As I was trimming away some of the extra Easysand I inadvertently scrapped away some of the sheetrock paper, not the full thickness though. It will need to be gone over with another thin coat of mud, either Easysand or my pre mixed green lidded joint compound. It will need to dry for a long time: I took that Easysand 20 and filled the gap along the entire ceiling periphery. After several hours, I took my 5-in-1 tool and shaved it flush with the existing plaster ceiling and made sure everything looked square. The product was still damp and easily shaved. When all of this dries I will tape up the corners and ceiling junctions using the green lid premix joint compound and a webbed, creased, tape I found. It was sort of expensive, but I only have right angles on this job and I figured it would help make the angles cleaner. Thanks for everyones input. It was very helpful. Now I just hope this works out ok as I have some thick layers up there.

If it were me, I would go low impact. You're not crazy. The charm of an old house is that it doesn't look like a new house. You just have to make your own call as to where the line is between "old house charm" and jankiness. A good floor guy can do magic to patch a floor. We have a large patched area which is invisible in our kitchen. Can you buy reclaimed flooring to match what you have from anywhere locally to use for patching, or can you salvage any flooring from any of the other work you're doing on the house? You might need to do some legwork but in most areas with a lot of old homes, there is someone. Another note...you absolutely do not need to tear out the old plaster to rewire if that is a concern. We just had our entire 1914 bungalow rewired, and in many places brought up to code, as part of a larger project. Basically the only holes to patch are where the old outlets and switches used to be, if we are not reusing them. They dropped in the new wires and left the old ones disconnected but still inside the walls. There are other reasons you might want to open up the walls, like if you want to add insulation inside the wall cavities (because of the need to install a vapor barrier, not bc of the wires), but a good electrician would not suggest it just for wiring. The vast majority of the plastering we had done was from reconfiguring the floor plan and moving our upstairs ceiling up 7". You can see the latter below. The texture of our old horsehair plaster (rough surface) does not quite match the new, but we don't expect that to be an issue once it's prepped and painted. I'm sure the availability and cost of doing blueboard and plaster varies by location, but here in Boston it is fairly standard.