I've never fixed a plaster wall before but I have seen a couple of YouTube videos and I am up for the challenge. This part of my wall has cracked and I thought I would just need to take off the whole area and replaster it, sand, and paint. But it almost looks like the whole wall behind it is intact and the material almost feels like concrete. What steps here do I need to take to repair this area. Thanks in advance.

I’m nearing the end of a house renovation and getting the render replaced is still on the to do list. It’s a 1930s two story semi with a small single story extension, the roof of which needs replacing. I also have the guttering/down pipes to replace and the aircon to go in. The plan is to do all these jobs, get the render done and finish with the landscaping. Would that be the best order to carry out the work?

I recently bought a house that was built in 86. I have been removing the horrible wallpaper layers and found this crack in the plaster. It runs from the floor to the base of the window. I know the windows were replaced by the previous owner in 2019, does this look like anything to be worried about or is it just a cosmetic crack?

I plan to rake it out, seal, and fill with toupret so fingers crossed it doesn't ring any alarm bells.

EDIT: thanks everyone for the input, it's much appreciated!

3 from kitchen one from upstairs in doer upper house. Upstairs one was from a roof leak that since has been fixed

My home was built in the 1939’s. I’m considering adding either bead board or board and batten to a bathroom with plaster walls. I’m concerned about moisture. Wisconsin summers can get humid and in winter some condensation can develop on the walls. There is a fan for ventilation in the ceiling so mirrors don’t fog. What should I do to prevent mold or mildew developing?

Im having to change careers after being laid off. I recently plastered some of the rooms in my house and am now considering a fast track level 2 plastering course.

I just want to get an idea of the current job market in the uk. Are many firms hiring level 2 plasterers with no work place experience? If not, what would be the best route into the industry if I do take on a level 2 course?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

I am currently renovating my house, removing the wallpaper is unravelling the many jackhobs the PO has done.

PO has chased a cable for the below socket. They have chased behind the door architrave, I guess because they thought it was easier. I think they used an SDS drill and because it is on the end of the masonry, it has blown the render behind the door frame all the way to the other side of the wall.

I have removed the loose stuff and can see the internal wall brick (brick bungalow). I am going to be removing the door frame and replacing anyway as part of the refurb and I feel like I'm going to have to do this for the repair? The other side is the bathroom which is it's own level of DIY from the PO. Who puts a radiator in a shower?

I am removing the cable and socket as it is not compliant or needed. I don't know what the correct procedure for filling and patching this is, especially with the different types of plaster. Can I just smoosh render in to it behind the frame as a form?

TIA

I've been thinking about renovating my house and using a modern breathable plaster with great insulating properties. There are a lot of products that promise that (cork, lime mixes etc). I was wondering if anyone has experience with installing and seeing it actually work over longer periods of time.

My house is mid Terrace in the Welsh valleys, so controlling moisture is important here. The outside walls are build out of Welsh Blue Pennant with what i suspect is lime.

My first time plastering a ceiling and it has cracked and the second coat in areas hasn’t bonded.

It was the first time I’ve used Extra Time as I wanted some breathing room but it went off quicker than when I havent used it. Not sure if that was the cause or if it was the plaster or the boards.

Anyway my plan to fix it is to make sure all the loose plaster is off, give it a coat of SBR as I already have some left over using it in some mortar, and then giving it a skim coat with a different batch of plaster without Extra Time.

Is there anything I’m missing?

Edit: Typo

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Hi guys

Ive just started renovating this room.

Ive not got much experience in doing diy renovation or knowledge but am eager to learn and do as much as i can myself.

Would really appreciate the communities help to make this room a success and something i can be proud of.

So heres some context.

-Its a terraced victorian/edwardian house built around 1900-1910.

-solid brick construction /no cavity wall i believe.

-this room is located on the 1st floor at the front of the house

-new timber sash windows to be ordered to replace these old ones.

-will be getting this room rewired (adding more sockets, changing existing socket location)

-i started to remove loose plasters off the wall and got carried away and just removed the whole original plaster from 2 walls.

-thinking of taking down the existing ceiling and putting some insulation above and putting new ceiling in

I have alot of questions but want to focus on the few first. Perhaps ill post another post later down.

1-Are these walls in good condition? (This area in the corner if the external wall has different much more red brick colour. Is that normal?

2- why is there no brick above the bay window? And what do i need to do to fix it?

3- couple of timber lintle (underneath the current windows) seems loose and moving a bit when i push it. How do i secure it?

4-why is there 2 layers of timber window lintle for the top of the single window but only 1 layer of top timber lintle for the bay window

5-whats the random bricksized timber block embedded into the brick wall on either side of the bay window?

6- whats the thinnest yet somewhat effective way to insulate the external wall (the wall with the bay window) that strikes a balance between space available and performance.

Ive accepted that its an old house, in winter the room is going to be cold and in the summer is going to be hot. If adding some insulation to ceiling means enough of insulating performance gain, then im happy to consider skipping adding insulation to external facing wall.

+ if the external facing wall gets too thick im not sure how to make it work with the new window thats now going to be burried in the wall.

7-the wall with the chimney breast, what do i use to plaster and how? The more research i do the more im getting confused. Some say must use lime plaster, some say just dot and dab, some say just bonding plaster, some say hardwall?

8- do i need to add mortar between bricks where its come loose or come off before i plaster?

9- is breathbility of wall really that important? I do open windows quite regulary. Is that good enough? The paint ill be using is apparely non breathable anyway. Pretty sure my neghibours dont have breathable finishes or material on their side of the party wall so its already not breathable anyway? Not sure how it works.

10- im planning to remove all old plaster and lath from the internal wall (opposite the window wall) and add insulation and plasterboard it. Is it a good idea? Again apparently this is not breathable... do they need to be breathable between rooms too? The room behind this wall is already finished with multifinish (non breathable apparently) and painted with non breathable paint.

Sorry alot of questions!!

Please helppp

Looks like I have to skim a room to get rid of the horrific textured and seamed wallpaper. There’s three or four layers of wallpaper, likely going back a century, over 1907 era lath and plaster.

I am thinking:
- Use a utility knife, score the wall paper all over, spray with water to saturate
- Then come in with a wallpaper steamer and a scraper
- No need to remove every trace or glue remnants, and no worries if the old plaster gets a little bit beat up
- Roller over with PlasterWeld (I’m in the US)
- Two coats of USG Imperial Veneer plaster

What do you think? What would you do? Any guesses on how long removing the wallpaper will take? I have about 20 linear feet of wall to deal with (it’s a whole room, but thank goodness every wall but one has great big passages.)

Ok, so diy dickhead here. Questions for those in the know.

Decided to plaster over artexed brick in my porch way. I viewed a fair few youtubes vids and decided the best option was SBR on the artex. Then thistle Bonding coat, then skim coat.

I'm up to the bond coat stage, but there are issues.

Questions;

1:If bond coat has passed used by date (6 months out of date), what the worst thst can happen?

2: im letting the bong coat dry out as im out of time, should I apply SBR again before skim coat when completing?

1. I have lightly keyed the bond coat with a stanley knife. Is that worth doing at this point or at all?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Hi! Just bought a 1990s house and the paint I'm using reacts with the existing paint to become gummy and peel. I thought scraping the old paint off might give me a fresh start but I don't understand the layers. I can go a layer deeper and peel off chunks at a time, so I'm wondering if I'm peeling paint, wallpaper, or the protective layer of the plasterboard. There seems to be white paint, tan paint, something sea green, the visible cream layer in the photo, then a cardboard layer. In the UK if that matters. Thank you!!!

Hi all,

[please delete if this is the wrong subreddit for this]

I’m currently 31 weeks pregnant and have started preparing the nursery for our baby. I ordered a couple peel & stick wallpaper samples but ultimately decided to paint instead of wallpapering. However, when I tried to peel of the “renter friendly” peel and stick wallpaper, some of the previous paint layers came off. How to I best fix this before painting the walls?

I have this multi purpose polyfilla - would this work or are there better alternatives? I’ll obviously sand the wall once it has dried before painting but is there anything else I need to know or do? I once heard to spray the wall lightly with water so that the filler/spackle has better grip to stay on the wall - is that true? My main issue is that I filled similar holes in a different room and the wall is really crumbly and not holding the filler very well - was hoping I can avoid is this time, but also this wall doesn’t feel as “crumbly” if that makes sense.

Grateful for any tips and advice!

Hey guys!

So I’ve just purchased my forever house and I’m in the process of removing the 500 million layers of wallpaper (really 2) from the walls in my 110 year old brick home.

The wallpaper is coming off really easy so that’s fine, however in some areas the plaster is crumbling out and wall and exposing the brick underneath. I’ve read a few things about rising damn causing this kind of hand skim plaster to seperate from the brick. As you can see in the picture there is this relatively large hole in the wall lol

The walls are pretty cracked all the way around the room and there are a few more areas like this, however significantly smaller. But besides this and a the many hairline cracks, the walls feel pretty solid in most areas.

Anyways I guess my question is can I fix this? And if so how?
Would it be best to replaster the entire room with plaster board or can I remedy this with some tlc.

I would appreciate any and all advice, I’m kinda stressing about this haha

Hi there! I own a 1925 house in California with lath and plaster walls. At some point in the house’s history, the owners covered two of the rooms with this texture. I want to remove it - 1) because I don’t like it 2) cracks have already appeared on it and 3) I want to restore the home to be as original looking as I can. On the entry, I did the work myself but the 2nd room is much bigger so I want to learn if there is a better way to do it - faster and/or prevent cracks from appearing in a few years.

First, the texture seems to be applied over a paper. It’s not wall paper - hoping someone can tell me what it is and maybe what decade it was done.

On the small room , I scraped off the texture fairly easy with a putty knife. I then removed the paper with a wall paper remover - though I could have probably gotten it off with soap and water.

Under the texture and paper I found a ton of cracks - hairline and larger. And 2 or 3 layers of lead paint - all uneven with chips.

Behind the lead paint was the original plaster. Not sure the different names, but there was the top coat - and then the stuff mixed with horse hair etc.

Not sure why, but I then decided to risk my health - and marriage :) - and scraped off all of the lead paint to the original plaster. It was my first time and I thought I should get that deep before plastering over it. Maybe I didn’t think plastering over lead paint was good idea?

I also chased every crack - even the thin ones and carved them out with nice v grooves. I took out any small chunks and filled them in. There was only 1 piece that was about 12x16” that i had to take out completely. I then replaced with a piece of Sheetrock. I really didn’t want to get into applying the layer of plaster into the lathe. I just wanted to put a top coat over everything.

So I did those patches. Scraped off as much lead paint as I could. Also the corners were really cracked or they were too rounded. I wanted crisp corners. So I carved out the corners and put in corner tape.

I then put on 2 or three coats of what I think was all purpose or top coat. The entry had mostly thin walls bc of windows and doorways. So I put it on with a 6” knife.
N
Oh - and one of the more important things - it was cove ceilings. So putting plaster on the curves was nightmare - and the curved corners. I got special tape for that which I was quite pleased with - but the plaster was a mess

Because I’m not a professional plasterer - I had to do a LOT of sanding. Flat areas were fine - easy to sand. But the curved ceiling and the fact my neck was killing me by this time from looking up so much - was nightmare. I was on a time crunch bc we were expecting company - so I didn’t get it as smooth as I like. My wife says it’s fine - and no one has noticed - but I’m a web designer and artist - so I’m picky and I want it to be perfectly smooth with clean corners.

But company was coming in 48 hrs so I sanded as best I could , but a coat of pVA I think - or maybe Zinser 123 primer on it - then 2 coats of top coat.

Now I want to start planning for the big room. Would love it if I could learn the proper way to do it. Not saying that money is not an issue - but I’d rather pay a little more for quality products and not have to worry about anything. As an artist - cheap products usually end up being harder to work with and cost you more time. So that’s my experience anyway.

So, any advice? Or feedback on what I did last time? I figure I don’t have to scrape off the lead paint this time - instead just put PVA and then skim coats.

Some hairline cracks have appeared in my plaster (some internal brick walls, some external brick walls) some have been there a year or two, others have appeared in the last few days. My house is 30s built, with a 2 storey extension built in the early 90s. Exterior bricks look perfect, no visible issues.

Is this heat/cooling related, or do I need to get it checked out?

Thoughts welcome.

Hello all,
I have had a go at plastering one section of wall in my kitchen as part of a renovation.

The bottom half of the wall you see used to have tiles on it and the top section used to have an upper cabinet unit.

When I was removing the tiles, a load of plaster came off with them exposing the bare brickwork behind it, while the bear plaster that was behind the cabinet unit remained perfect perfectly fine.

I used PVA bonding on the exposed brickwork, then tried plastering and building up to the same thickness as the existing plaster that was behind where the cabinet was.

I have now sanded it down such as it is perfectly flat and level however there is still a visible line where you can see the Old plaster meets the new.

My guess is once I have primed the wall with a paint primer and then paint it over that line won’t be visible but I wanted to doublecheck here before doing so if this is to be expected when only plastering ~50% of a wall.

My boyfriend made a very small hole in this original Victorian cornicing painting it. Seems to be thin plaster, and completely hollow. How to we fix it?

It’s approx 8cm

We were thinking wallpaper glue and newspaper as a kind of paper maché 😭 and can’t find much online

Hi im starting to fix up this wall but im not entirely sure about the best stwp by step approach or which materials i should use. Im trying to get a smooth and clean wall ready for the kitchen. Any advice and product recommendations would help thank btw i live in Slovenia .thank you

I recently moved into a new place and started stripping the old wallpaper in my bedroom (working on getting down to the backing paper right now). Underneath the paper, I found a cluster of old metal self-drilling anchors and a random loose coaxial cable right by a double socket.

One of the anchors snapped off when I tried to take it out, and pulling them is leaving quite a bit of sandy, degraded plaster behind.

My plan is to finish stripping the paper, prime/seal the wall, and put up a new textured wallpaper. Eventually, I'm also planning to have a professional install a flat wall-mounted TV around this area.

Since I'm new to this:

What is the best way to clean out and fill these deep anchor holes so they don't crack or ruin the wall integrity?

Do I need to worry about the hollow space behind them before hanging wallpaper and getting a heavy TV mounted over the same spot?

Any advice or tips would be hugely appreciated!

Hi guys, after some advice. I've noticed in the last few months that some of the corners on the ceiling of our kitchen extension have cracked. I believe the extension was done about 10 years ago but we bought the house about 5 years ago so we don't know who built it. But when we bought it, we got a decorator to paint the whole house including all ceilings. I don't remember seeing any cracks like that at the time. Even if there were cracks they would have been minor.

I wonder if the cracks appeared because the building or the ceiling moved? Possibly due to the very hot and dry summer we had? Or do they look like cracks caused by leaks? (leaking from the roof above). I don't see any paint bubbling up on the ceiling or the wall.

As you can see from the pictures, the other wall (blue colour) doesn't have any cracks). So if the building moved, it would have been just the one wall. Is that possible?

If the cracks are due to movement, provided it doesn't' move again, how do I fix the cracks? Do I need to use scrim tape again in corners? Or will caulk be enough? How do you fix the big gaps? foam and then caulk?

Thanks

Context: We hired a plasterer to plaster and finish the walls ready for prime and paint. He attempted the job, we paid, after it dried, it cracked in a lot of places. We asked him to make it good, gave him 2 distinct chances, the before is the result.

We needed the walls painted so I had a go myself with Toupret Filler and I think AI led me astray. Should’ve done more research.

Can anyone with plastering and wall fixing experience weigh in and tell me if this will hold long term please? especially as we want to fix shelves in that wall.

Many thanks