Plaster ceilings, walls and a new homeowner

15 years ago

Hi everyone! We've just moved into our first house, a 1930 colonial. I've got a few questions about repairing the plaster that I was hoping for some input on. This is a little long so please bear with me :)

1. We have plaster ceilings in very poor shape. Holes (from a drop ceiling), water damage (the leak has been fixed), extensive cracking, some discoloration. We want to put sheetrock up right over the damaged plaster rather than try and take it down. Can we really do this or should we have the plaster removed? It's in bad enough condition that it MUST be either removed/replaced or covered. It would be too expensive for us to hire a plasterer to try and salvage it.

2. In the upstairs hallway and over the stairs, the ceiling are also plaster and have some textured treatment on them, the realtor called it "Craftex" I think.....it looks to me like someone intentionally did the worst spackle job of thier life. We saw it in quite a few houses around here (lower NE). The question again, can we cover this stuff with sheetrock? Or use a power sander and smooth it out? It's starting to buckle in one place, but other than that is just ugly. We don't know what *exactly* it is, so we weren't sure what to do with it......but we know we don't like it! :)

3. I've been scraping wallpaper from the plaster walls using DIF, it's coming off pretty well and most rooms only have 1 or 2 layers, so I can't complain about that. Unfortunately, taking the paper off exposed huge holes on the walls where the previous owners forceably ripped off the 6" molding.....some damage extends up the sides of the doorframe moldings as well. We're not sure what would be better......trying to repair it (other than this the walls are not too bad), installing new molding to cover the holes, or buying yet another load of sheetrock and covering the plaster altogether.

4. Is there a product people like best to even out the texture of the plaster walls? They are very rough in a lot of places. Actually it looks like the finish may have come off or something It's very rough and greyish tan/brown in some spots. We want to paint the walls in the long run, so the walls need to be nice and smooth.

Any and all help would be hugely appreciated! I'm going to head over to the bookstore tonight after work and see what they have for maintaining/repairing an old home.

Beth

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Comments (5)

skylyn
15 years ago
I can try and address #1. In our old house, we had a few bedrooms with plaster celings that were really rough (we pulled out drop ceilings, etc). If the plaster is not secure, you can get these screws made just for the purpose of secureing loose plaster. Then, what we did was, we ran firing strips along all of the studs and secured them through the plaster (and into the studs) with some very long screws. Then, we hung the drywall. Firing out the ceiling made the job very easy and secure. Here are some TOH articles on this: Link 1 Link 2
mwkbear
15 years ago
Hi,

I'm just an average DIY type, but I had the same issues with the plaster walls in my 1900 foursquare.

The plaster on the walls consists of a "rough" bottom layer,and a smooth skim coat over that. In our house, on many of the wallpapered walls, when we removed the wallpaper, the skim coat came off with it. In our particular case, we decided to use drywall mud to smooth out the wall and fill in the cracks and the areas where the skim had come off. We decided to re-wallpaper with a good quality (easily strippable) vinyl paper, which hides a multitude of wall "sins".

In a couple of areas, we had the same ceiling issues as you did. Cracks, missing skim coats, ugly finish treatments. In both areas, we just put up a 1/4" drywall sheet over the ceiling and screwed it into the studs with flat head screws, which we countersank 1/32", and covered with drywall mud and tape, and painted over it. It looks great. You do need to be sure that the plaster ceiling is relatively stable before you do this, but the drywall will also help hold the plaster together.

In one area near our stairs, the plaster had crumbled altogether and lost the "keys" connecting it to the lath behind. We ended up chopping out the remaining plaster and evening out the edges until there was just lath. Then, we again used 1/4" drywall and screwed this to the lath, using drywall mud and tape to span the seams, and sanded it all smooth. Once the wallpaper went up, it looked perfect.

In still other areas, we just fixed cracks in the plaster, and painted over it. It has a rough, uneven look to the wall, but a flat finish paint hides that a bit. We looked at a lot of other "historic" houses, and saw that most of them had the rough looking walls as well. So, we just chalk that up to "historic charm".

Finally, although I haven't used it myself, there is a product called Nu-Wall, which is like a super wallpaper product, specifically designed to repair plaster walls and cover cracks and such. There is also special paintable wallpaper, which acts as a smooth base for the wall, to hide the imperfections, if you are bothered by that.
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I did the same thing with my remodel. I am a total DIY'er. Maybe someone else has a better idea. I kept the plaster ceiling too, though it was wood lath and plaster, and filled the periphery void with a plastic type corner bead with synthetic mesh paper. I used durabond to mud the seams. Here are some of my pictures. Hole from the old vent stack that I repaired using plastic lath and durabond. Not your issue but you can see the gap to the right of the hole that was all around the room: Process of the repair: Ceiling gap process using the corner tape that is plastic. I might have pre filled the gap with durabond to close the gap before I put up the tape. Keep the durabond below the surface if you do this. One of my hole repair pictures looks like I might have prefilled the gap prior to taping the periphery of the room: In between process pictures: Finished corner where that large hole was: Other areas of the finished and painted ceiling:
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If it looks BS, sounds like BS and smells like you know what, then it is. Old three-coat over lath plaster is put on in layers, the under layers (rough and scratch coats) can look a little rough, and they are supposed to be so for good adhesion. If your other walls are smooth then you have finish coat plaster on top, which is usually smooth as as silk. Its smoothness comes from the final polishing. My finish coat plaster is so smooth that little silicate (sand) particles in my unpainted bedroom ceiling will sparkle if the light hits them right. Now the contractor who did this, is he a plasterer, or something else? Did he use real plaster or joint compound? Is the plaster (if that's what it is) over lath or is a skim coat over board? And what is the nature of the roughness or texture: ripples, waves, orange peel or more than that? Also, though this may not be so important for modern plaster mixtures, older ones at least, need to cure and be primed before they can take any paint. Has anybody taken that into account? And yes, you can sand plaster; a big mess (lots of dust), but it can be done. Usually the problem is the other way around; in some areas of the country it is apparently customary to have a "knock-down" finish to plaster, in those cases the patch is often too smooth compared to the remaining walls. What was the outcome today? Good Luck! Molly~
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I doubt the builder is using plaster. It's probably good ol' joint compound. Plaster is one of the "master crafts" and it's quite expensive. Pretty much all new construction I've seen in the past few years has textured walls and ceilings. Two homes I toured last year were ~2 millon...with popcorn ceilings and stippled walls. Wow. Just wow. Of course, the future owners may have requested the texture, who knows, but I guess I just wonder why someone who wanted to spend 2 million on a house wouldn't want better finishes, like a gorgeous smooth plaster! Bluntly, builders love texture because it saves them money. Even without "nail pops". With a knockdown finish on walls and ceilings, there is less taping and oodles less sanding. My inexpensively-but-well-built 1974 home had textured walls and ceilings (very 70's mediterranean pizza parlor). When the walls were ripped out for new sheetrock, I noticed that some seams had had no tape on them whatsoever. The texture had hidden this completely. It's not just builders that love to sell textured surfaces; remodeling contractors do, too. At least mine :-D My contractor had bid on the scraping/smoothing of the the popcorn ceilings. When the ceilings were scraped and still rough, he then tried to talk me into a knockdown texture, telling me how much more "interesting" that would be than flat. Uh...no.
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ericwi
15 years ago
My expertise is in standard lath and plaster, not in sheetrock applied over plaster. If you care to remove and replace the cracked and hanging plaster with new basecoat/finish coat plaster, I can help you with this process. If you decide to use sheetrock to cover your plaster, this can be done. You should be aware that both plaster and sheetrock serve to protect the wooden framework of your home from fire. Thickness matters, so, if you find it necessary to remove all of the plaster from the lath, then you really should be using 1/2 inch, or thicker sheetrock, when you cover the wall. I suspect that your local building code will speak to this requirement.
lenl
15 years ago
ok. Thats a lot of issues. Plaster is now considered a high end improvement over sheet. It has better sound characteristics. If you are bent on covering, not repairing, (recommended), find the studs, mark them, and put 3/8 drywall over it. You will need to contact a drywall supplier for this size, its usually not at HD. It won't be even, but , nothing is. If you don't put 5/8 on the ceiling, it will sag. Put the ceiling up first, resting the ceiling on the wall sheet. ericwi knows his/her stuff, I've seen other comments. You are asking for a Porche, on a chevy budget, if you think it will be easy.
Good Luck, Len
Jen12345
10 years ago
i have craftex plaster in my home that was also built in 1930. does anyone know if this type of plaster could contain asbestos? thanks

Plaster ceilings, walls and a new homeowner

Comments (5)

skylyn

mwkbear

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ericwi

lenl

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