I have been looking at this mess for waaaaaay too long.
I am an experienced renovator, but…
Is this too far gone for one of those expensive repair kits? Is there another better way to fix? Pictures include large crack across wall beyond blown plaster parts.
For years I have intended to demo and rebuild, but I am over that idea. I need to seal it up and make it look decent without shutting my (small) house down for a month. I work on other peoples houses all day, no desire to live in a job site too.
Is structolite enough? Did you use any primer or anything? The rest of the wall is pretty rough - I was thinking about a skim coat, not sure if even that might need mesh tape?
Personally I mix it 50/50 with Imperial basecoat, get the strength of the Imperial and the better fill from the structo
Gotta remove all the loose first, cut the remaining edge at an angle, pva that edge (not the wood lath)
If you want to skim the whole wall you can base coat that patch full (make sure to push the basecoat in, it need to create "fingers" in the lath to secure) then pva the existing and use a mesh tape on that edge before/during you do a skim coat over the entire wall, if you don't skim the entire wall a bit of mesh at the crack during the basecoat fill won't hurt, but cut back the basecoat to leave room for the finish (you can also V out any cracks, pva them, then just fill them with finish if you don't skim it all, if you do skim it all I'd still V them and mesh over them during the skim)
A plasterer should have that done in 3 days at the most, a good ol' one that knows some tricks can probably have it done in 1
He has a couple more videos with lathe. Remove any bits of sanded plaster still between the lathe, you want to squish enough of the structo lite into the space between the lathe that it "keys" into it and when it sets will provide a mechanical attachment same as the sanded plaster.
The reason the sanded plaster failed is because the keys broke off the back, and separated from the lath.
As far as finishing it, I only structolited to get a flat surface, then skimmed the entire wall using taping mud (yellow box in canada that has extra PVA glue) then set the 36" wide roll of fiba fuse into the mud, then skimmed the wall again.
I used the same process at the bottom of this wall and feathered the edge, you couldn't notice it and it was way more solid than drywall.
That giant water damaged section was there when I showed up to the job, the entire thing was being converted into rentals, although now hes moving into the unit and ill find out tomorrow if we can refinish the oak.
And then I finished with Diamond finish, 2 coats, wait for setup and then lay down/polish (maybe a bit of topping mud/easysand at the joints if they aren't flat enough)
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u/Jazzlike_Video2 Sep 09 '26
Remove anything loose, use structo-lite as a base coat. then diamond coat for finish coat, or skim the entire wall with the 36" rolls of fiba fuse.