Anyone have plaster walls?

We're looking at an older home. it has all plaster walls. They are beautiful but need to be repaired in a few spots. Is it a PIA to fix yourself? If it is, is it expensive to have someone come in to do it?

Also, if you had to replace a ceiling, could you take out the entire plaster ceiling and replace it with sheetrock and then paint? would that look crazy? can you even tell?

Any advice about Plaster walls is appreciated.

Re: Anyone have plaster walls?

We have plaster walls, but they were textured (they looked like stucco). I hated that look so we had all the walls and the ceilings in the house skim-coated smooth. It was a bit pricey (and horrendously messy—dust EVERYWHERE), but the walls now look brand new and perfect. If you're just correcting some cracks, I don't think it would be too crazy. We had some major cracks on the walls and ceilings and they were fixed quickly and easily.

Good luck!

Re: Anyone have plaster walls?

We have an older home and have plaster textured walls everywhere.
It's actually really easy to fix any small cracks because the texture helps hide any imperfections. You just spackle and blend in with the existing pattern.

Not sure about replacing an entire ceiling though... sounds like it could be really really messy

Re: Anyone have plaster walls?

these are smooth, as far as I can tell, no texture to them at all.

I think the ceiling might be messy to remove, but there is a skylight that is there and in bad shape, and leaking so it has to come out, no choice.
But I'm hoping to hear we could do sheet rock and you wouldn't be able to tell...

Re: Anyone have plaster walls?

We just bought a house that has plaster walls and I noticed that in the living room they put sheetrock on the ceiling over the plaster. My dad said they just sheetrocked over the existing plaster (he can tell because the noulding they used isn't wide enough). The ceiling is high anyway so it doens't make a difference (although sheetrock is available in small widths anyway).

Me being curious, asked my dad is we could remove the sheetrock to see what was underneath and he looked at me like I was crazy - he said its better left alone.

If you cover it with sheetrock and use appropriate moulding I doubt anyone would know. I'm not sure about renoving it though, that would result in lots of mess and dust.

Re: Anyone have plaster walls?

Re: Anyone have plaster walls?

our house has plaster walls and ceilings. when our seller had the window's replaced, the window guys were less than gentle which caused cracks around almost all of the windows. we also have some settlement cracks in the ceilings b/c the lattice work beneath the plaster isn't in very large sections. we'll be fixing them when we move in and likely putting up very thin sheet rock in the room that has the bad ceiling.

Here is a great article about drywalling over plaster.

with the cracks on the walls, we are going to gouge them out with a utility knife, fill it with mesh and then replaster over it. we think that will do the trick since the house at this point (built in 1950) isn't going to do much more settling.

we are going this route b/c to tear down all of the plaster is a messy business and we don't have that much time, energy or money to put into it!

Re: Anyone have plaster walls?

Re: Anyone have plaster walls?

Plaster walls are easy to repair basic things, but to tear down walls, etc gets more complicated if there is lath (Sp?) wire mesh underneath.

We have plaster walls and they can be great but also a PIA. But if you sheetrocked the ceiling it would be fine, not funny looking at all. It would be hard to tell if the sheetrock is done right of course.

Re: Anyone have plaster walls?

I definitely cannot tell that there is a sheetrock ceiling next to plaster walls. Not at all noticeable. Had they not been idiots and used ugly moulding that didn't cover the seams around the edges of the room, we probably would not have realized it for very long.

Re: Anyone have plaster walls?

Re: Anyone have plaster walls?

we skim coated all of our plaster walls and the downstairs ceilings...hired someone to do that

in the rooms upstairs we put sheet rock up over the ceiling only...totally cant tell the difference.

we only gutted the small bathroom...wire and wooden lath, not fun, produced tons of debris, but was only a 5x8 room :)

we put in insulation in the bathroom when we gutted it...blew in insulation from the outside for the rest of the house.

Re: Anyone have plaster walls?

We have all plaster walls and there was one spot where there had been a window that they had filled with sheet rock and you cannot tell. We fixed some major cracks ourselves and did a damn good job. we gouged out any loose plaster and used a mesh material and new plaster to fix it. Took about na hour. Very easy. I love my plaster walls!

Re: Anyone have plaster walls?