For context, here’s my house, so you get a feel of what I’m working with. (We’ll be converting the carport to a one-car garage and rebuilding the arbor so it looks better, more “craftsman” like. )

Charming house! I would vote to pull down the whole ceiling and go back with drywall, especially since you are introducing a skylight and can lights. As to the walls... Yes they can be skimmed better, and you are OK with some texture. That said you are moving a window and removing a fireplace- that sounds like a lot of patching. It sounds like a good time to at least demo everything off the exterior walls, and add insulation. I don't love drywall over plaster as the moldings get funky (thought I think it's a fine solution on a ceiling)

I think with the amount of changes you're doing replacing it with drywall sounds like the best option in terms of money. I'm sure a good plaster guy could do a good patch job its just going to come down to cost. I suggest you get bids for both then decide.

Thank you both for your feedback and professional opinions. Sounds like my idea to “save the plaster” for aesthetic reasons isn’t worth It? My contractor said the plaster guy will cost more; he‘s so certain, he doesn’t think it worth bringing him out to get a bid. (This is the first time he’s said anything like this). The actual cost isn’t huge-huge but a) overall, I feeling project creep and b) it feels extreme and c) that first idea of drywall over plaster sounded so kludgy. I’m assuming replacing the walls means all the baseboards come off and will need to be replaced, so there’s that extra cost. (i.e. they may get damaged in remodel?) So what started out as a skimcoat feels like it’s turning into a much bigger project. So much so that I’m wondering if it’s worth it and whether I should scale back (maybe not remove the beam in the ceiling? Though i hate it and it chops up the room). Thanks for your help!

Another concern I had is that the more we open up walls, the more chance that we’ll find something that needs to be repaired. I guess that’s just the way things go?

Do you know if its plaster over wood lath, or plaster over rock-lath? Rock-lathe looks a lot like drywall and was installed in 4'x4' sheets to support the finished plaster layers. The reason I ask is that I think plaster over rock-lath is easier to patch, since its like patching extremely thick drywall (total thickness is usually about 1" or more).

I have plaster in my house, and really love it, but for a project like yours its probably best to just pull it down and use drywall to enclose it after all the other tasks have been completed.

When someone pulls down the plaster, make sure they fully understand the weight and the mess involved. A 4'x4' piece of plaster is heavy enough to give someone a concussion or break a limb if it falls at the right angle. It is way heavier than drywall.

Bruce

Thanks everyone for the extra comments.

Bruce, it’s wood lath. I’ve seen it when we did the other patches. The contractor is bringing in a professional demo guy who is used to dealing with older homes and issues like asbestos. Thanks for the heads up.

emho, thanks for that. That was my sense that the room would feel different (I think that’s where my architect was coming from too).

I recently remodeled my 1938 kitchen. It was totally gutted, replacing the lathe and plaster with drywall because the original wiring (three outlets and two light switches) was inadequate and would not pass current codes. Finished and painted, the walls don't look significantly different from the rest of the original house. The noticeable difference is in the new cabinets. They have sharper edges and the conversion varnish looks startlingly new compared to the original woodwork in the house.

I fall in the preservation of old homes group rather than obliterate and modernize set. HALLETT & Co gave me excellent advice when I was restoring lathe and plaster walls in adjoining rooms. I would trust their recommendations.

If the cracks are from the plaster separating from the lath, that can be fixed. The process involves drilling holes in the plaster to, but not through, the lath. Then injecting an adhesive into the holes (so it seeps between the plaster & lath), and screwing the plaster tight to the lath (with plaster washers). When it sets, take out the screws and patch. Lots of screws needed, but it works.

There's a special glue used for it; I don't know what it is. This Old House has used the system on their projects.

I've done it without the glue, leaving the screws in place (without washers, just embedded below the surface and skim coated). It looked great and saved 2 major areas of plaster from falling off the walls.

We have a 1910 home. We had some major plumbing work done on the DR wall ...all the original plaster from ceiling to floor in a 2 ft wide strip was removed. The plaster guy we used came highly recommended . Our carpenter used drywall to restore the area and then his guy came. He was amazing ! Even at a distance of inches you can't tell it isn't plaster. He uses a special technique to finish drywall. He calls it " wet sponge". He DOES NOT sand the mudding. Instead he uses a wet sponge and works it till it looks like a perfect plaster finish.

We are getting ready to do some extensive remodeling . A beam is going to be placed in the ceiling of our foyer staircase to allow us to have it cut out to make the area up to code as far as headroom going up the stairs. So we are getting a beam LOL...but it will be hidden in the wall/ceiling. We are adding a room and widening doorways. All will be done using drywall and this fellow to do the finish work. NO SANDING !

Our 1890 house before this one had drywall added to the whole downstairs and all the wonderful moldings were weird due to not being removed first so I can attest to that looking clunky.

I would go forward with your plans . You have a wonderful house and you will be so glad you made the changes. You have been there a long time and you aren't going anywhere. Talk to your contractor and your wall finisher and make sure that he uses this finish with the drywall. It looks perfect . https://www.google.com/search?q=wet+sponge+finish+to+drywall&oq=wet+sponge+finish+to+drywall&aqs=chrome..69i57.6803j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Any competent plasterer should be able to fix whatever holes you need to make. S/he should be able to either fill with lath and do a traditional finish or fill with blueboard and knit the edges in such a way that they don't show. Please don't put drywall in your beautiful house!

FWIW, I've never seen a plasterer sand anything, they just get it right the first time-- one of the many advantages of plaster over drywall.

Having lived in both a plaster house (of the rock lath variety) and a drywall house, I can say plaster is definitely the superior product. In the plaster house, I had repairs of various sizes done (not to your extent though) and they blended seamlessly with the original walls/ceilings and were completely undetectable (except for one; more below). BUT the undetectable repairs were done by a professional plastering company whose plasterers were members of the plasterers union. (BTW, for anyone in the Chicago area, I can highly recommend Kelly Plastering.)

Also, one should expect to make repairs once in a while over the years because minor cracks do happen (not related to foundation problems, etc. which are a different story). I had ceiling cracks repaired (two different rooms) on separate occasions when I painted the rooms. The first was repaired by a carpenter/drywaller who taped and skimmed the crack. The repair is visible. The second was repaired by a plasterer from the above mentioned company. He undercut the crack first. When he had finished that step, my mouth dropped because the ceiling looked way, way worse. However, after he was done, the patch dried, primed and painted, the repair is totally invisible. As rwiegand notes, plasterers don't sand to get a smooth surface. The cost for the plasterer was significantly higher than the carpenter for patching similarly sized cracks.

I'm not knocking carpenters but I don't hire electricians to do my carpentry either. Unfortunately, professional plasterers are probably scarcer than hen's teeth outside of major metropolitan areas. I chatted with the plasterer who fixed a large hole in one wall which an electrician had to open to do some rewiring. He told me the Chicago area plasterer's union membership is a very, very small fraction of what it was in the 1960's. He also said the majority of work is repair but they still, on rare occasions, get new home jobs and major remodels with new plaster throughout. These guys are not only pros but artists. Long before stick-on styrofoam room details, these details were done in plaster and can still be done new today. (See pictures below.)

You'll have to decide if the cost is worth it to you and what your budget is like. As with anything, there are trade-offs unless you have an unlimited budget.

Wow that is a lot of work to not find out what else needs to be addressed. So I am in the camp of rip out the plaster get at all the electrical now while it is easy to get at.I honestly did not notice a difference in my 1905 house when we had to replace plaster walls with drywall and if we had not done that the house probably would have burned down by now. I believe when doing this much work better to be safe than sorry.

Thanks everyone for you extra feedback. It is good food for thought,and I’ve had more time to sleep on it.

At the risk of sounding precious, I personally can feel the difference in the plaster walls vs. drywall. I can feel the difference when I touch them and as emho pointed out, the sound is absorbed differently. When I remodeled the guest bath in that orignal part of the house 10 years ago, I felt bad taking down the plaster walls there. That bathroom wasn’t original anymore; someone had done a hodgepodge remodel in the 80s, so that project was to fix the remuddle. FWIW, most of the wiring in this room has been upgraded—the overhead light and all the outlets. I believe the only remaining knob and tube is at the light switches. (The front porch light wasn’t upgraded). 20 years ago I had a central heating installed in the attic (not ideal I know, but the crawlspace is super tight and I live in California, so no deep freeze) . That furnace guy managed to install vents and the furnace “return” In the plaster ceilings in the original part of the house without any issues. My house painter plastered the big hole where the wall furnace has been, to good effect.

I’m wondering if I should switch to taking a “minimally invasive“ approach to this remodel, at least in the original part of the house. I don’t mind the cracks in the walls and ceilings. If I convert the carport to a garage, the tacky fireplace comes out and that lovely original tall window has to move. Because the dining room area will become even darker I will need to add a skylight back there. Maybe do that and skip everything else? Don’t move the beam; don’t try to fix the bulges in the wall from the poor patch job removing the wall? You can also see where they patched the floor. (pics below). I’ve twice had hardwood guys out for estimates to refinish the original floors, including for this project, and after discussing the ins and outs, they always say that customers are paying top dollar to install floors that look like mine (using recycled wood). The hardwood guy who came out this time said they had a current customer paying to have their floor have these little patches that made it look like it had be modified through the years. Here’s the pic. You can also see the wall patch job.

This is an old home. I feel like I should honor and respect that (and fix the remuddle in the back of the house). To me, the elements that make this look and feel like an old home are the great big windows, the plaster walls and these floors. I don’t know. What do you think? Am I crazy? Too sentimental? At this point, it doesn’t even feel like it’s about the $ but about keeping the feeling of the original house. Thank you!!!!!

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.

It's a delightful old house in California. Once you start causing things to shake, more and more cracks will appear. Having extensive remodelling done can be like a magnitude 3 or 4 earthquake nearby, IME. I would not move the beam because I like the historic character. But we don't live in the past, and recessed lighting may be what you really want, so it's up to you. Old Craftsman houses were dark by today's standards, and they are even darker with large trees that have grown to shade the windows.

Fix what you can with a good plasterer, but don't stress too much about having to use some drywall. The knob and tube wiring may have really ancient brittle insulation on it, and you may be required to replace it once you start changing things- check with city hall. A 20% budget for contingencies is often used in my area for old house renovations. You never know what you'll find when you open up walls and ceilings.

One or more skylights, not visible from the street, would allow sunlight to stream into the rooms, I agree. You can use Solatubes with the extra LED lighting that acts as a room light in the evenings, for example.

Thanks everyone for your comments. I got a referral to a couple plaster guys from my architect. One guy does both plaster and drywall (maybe they all do), so that could be a valuable opinion. As someone mentioned here, maybe I'll replace the ceiling with drywall but keep the plaster walls. FIngers crossed. Thanks again everyone!

During the project, one of the workers partially stepped through our foyer ceiling, which was stucco (it was originally a screen porch which has since been enclosed). Our contractor just put a new layer of blueboard and plaster right over the old stucco in that room. The ceiling is only 1/2" lower and it looks great.

Love the garden

FWIW Bob Villa says the materials cost about the same, but the labor can be 3x. Fair enough. But the holes aren't 1/3 the total wall size (on the walls at least; ceiling may be different). Plus I'd save the cost of demo-ing all the existing plaster, which is $$$.

https://www.bobvila.com/articles/drywall-vs-plaster/

Now I'm becoming very aware of the plaster walls in my house. The LR/DR runs into the kitchen, where there's a 2 foot section of plaster wall and then a floor to ceiling cabinet. I'm hoping when that cabinet gets demo'd it will expose a plaster wall that is in good condition. (or which can be repaired fairly easily.) That is the end of the original house. The rest of the kitchen was added on (twice) along with the master bedroom suite. Thanks again for all your help! Now I can't wait for the plaster guy(s) to show up an give their opinion. Fingers crossed!

You mentioned the knob and tube at the switches. Now, I am worrying. Since you are saying the rest of the wiring has been replaced, that must mean the knob and tube and regular wiring are spliced somewhere, and that is a fire waiting to happen. Please include a good check out of all the wiring in your house, during this remodel. Removing that plaster would allow all new wiring put in so you are safer. I love plaster, but, not sure it is worth saving, if the wiring could burn the house down.

Again. You DO NOT need to remove the plaster and open the walls to rewire the house, regardless of what rats-nest situation is in there. That would be truly ridiculous. No one would ever rewire, just due to sheer expense and unholy plaster dust mess and invasiveness, if that was the case.

Source: live in Boston, where every old house has knob and tube or did at one time. Also: just had my 1914 bungalow (which did have spliced knob and tube/regular wiring, and somehow never burned down) rewired with 200 amp service and data cabling and brought the outlets to code in some rooms. Did not open the walls except in the kitchen, which was gutted for other reasons. Hardly any holes to patch from the wiring. A good electrician would not even suggest opening the walls for this.

Cat_ky, thanks for your concern. I probably wasn’t clear. In this living room, the outlets were upgraded. The exterior front porch light and its switch inside were not. Etc. I’ve been upgrading whenever I touch a room (and for common walls, the plugs in the adjacent room). I couple years ago I had an electrical out to bid the electrical panel upgrade and this knob and tube. He ID’d about 6-8 spots total, but also recommended I just wait for the remodel. I.e. if I want to move the switch over a little, the plaster repair guy will be out anyway.

Thanks emho23 for sharing your experience. Yes, as part of the little project, we moved an outlet and the wall got patched and it looks fine.