#Plaster washers how to#
#Plaster washers cracked#
#Plaster washers skin#

Placing the buttons along the joists pulls the ceiling back up into a stable location. Gravity has likely had its way with the ceiling over 100+ years, and the heavy plaster has slowly either pulled away from the wood lath behind it, or it's begun pulling the lath nails right our of the joists. We systematically went around the room applying plaster buttons at one foot intervals along the ceiling joists. Instead, we began our typical process to repair and revive.

#Plaster washers how to#

Well, that is, until today when we kick off a multi part post on how to achieve this very thing.

#Plaster washers cracked#

We've covered how we use plaster buttons to secure our sagging ceilings and cracked walls, as well as how we use a mix of drywall, joint compound, and patience to patch holes left in the plaster by various projects, but we've never really covered a major project dealing with repairing old plaster and mixing in new materials on a much larger scale. It's less invasive, more environmentally friendly, cheaper (from a DIY perspective), generally cleaner (though cleanliness is all relative), and maintains the historic character that is too easily lost in homes today. The result of our education in plaster is a deep seeded desire to salvage and repair plaster whenever possible. Slight imperfections, a gentle hand laid roll to the surface, and the noise canceling characteristics of solid, one inch thick or wider plaster adds to the ambiance of any old home, and to lose that, well, you begin to lose the soul of the house. Not only does it offer a basis for wall and ceiling covering, it also provides a unique texture to the interior of our home that drywall board doesn't provide.

#Plaster washers skin#

And we all know that the skin is the single most important organ the body owns.Īs we learned more about our home's plaster in our early days of renovation, we learned what a truly significant aspect of our home is represented by its original horse hair plaster that still covers the majority of the walls and ceilings. In an old home let's be sure to look past the 'bones' and see that the plumbing is the circulatory system, the electrical is the nervous system, windows are the eyes, HVAC is the respiratory system, and the plaster and lath walls covering most interior surfaces, well, that plaster is your home's skin. The bones are represented by the framing and structural items, but one needs more than 'good bones' to have a human who is worth anything. In reality, when you hear the phase 'that house has good bones,' it's giving a sense of humanity to a building. North by Northside, Jeff SkrenesNorth by Northside, Jeff Skrenes Before we shook off the propaganda I'm rather certain started with the gypsum board industry, much the same way vinyl window salesman have long peddled the theory that a home's 100+ year old windows should certainly be removed in favor of energy efficient gems that cost a pantload and 'should last a good 30 years.' Oh, what a bargain.right? When we started to think about our home renovation plans, the initial thoughts that our cracked, bumpy, and crumbling plaster was 'too far gone' and the belief that we'd need to 'gut every room' entered into our conversations quite frequently. When we moved into our house we had been indoctrinated by countless television shows and contractor horror stories in dealing with the fragile, crumbling, dusty, and gritty mess that tends to represent old fashioned plaster.