Looking at the lines on your house (where it's not finished out, needs to be backfilled), you're going to need some retaining walls. I'm not sure why this wasn't addressed during construction. Poured concrete retaining walls could have been done at the same time your basement walls were poured. imo, since your GC (if you have one) didn't figure it out during the build, you should contact a landscape architect/designer who can help the house blend into the land. Congrats on getting power. Hope you enjoy your new home.

I have a single very expensive stud finder that works on plaster, but it will mess up if expanded metal is present. Expanded metal was used to strengthen interior corners, hold metal bead on exterior corners, and even as the entire lathe in place of wood strips. By a couple 1/16 inch drill bits and start hunting. While nominally on 16 inch centers, older house often wander a little. Measuring can give you a place to start drilling, but you need to verify the stud location at the exact height you want to anchor. The lightweight spackling putty makes short work of filling the small holes. the drills will quickly be dulled, and not be useful for anything else without sharpening. Save them for future use. They can be pretty dull and still work in plaster. The plaster will

My new build is the same way. It bothered me at first, but when I realized that every seat and step was that way, I didn't worry about 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.