Patching plaster

[Dan_Musicant]

I see 25 lb. bags of "patching plaster" for sale and 25 lb. bags of "Fix-It-All" for about $2 more. Which is the better buy?

My 90+ year old house is mostly lath and plaster and there's a lot of bulging and fallen away plaster.

I bought a trowel and made a hawk and am ambitious to learn and apply knowledge on plaster repair. One guy told me he thought it would be better for me to put up 1/4 inch sheetrock on a ceiling that has a lot of falling plaster. My sheetrock experience is nil, but I have some pieces from a leftover sheetrock job.

Hopefully, a foundation removal and new foundation and house leveling is in the works here, and I figure I should hold off on complete plaster repairs until after that, but right now, there are some areas that I think I should/could maybe tackle sooner.

TIA for guidance.

Dan

[Wayne Whitney]

Neither. For base coat patches (to the exposed wood lath), use Struct-o-lite plaster, a premixed lightweight base plaster with perlite as the aggregate. For finish coat patches, use Diamond brand gypsum plaster with lime.

For SF Bay Area residents, these are both available at Alta Building Materials in Oakland. Also, someone on craigslist.org is currently advertising a free bag of Struct-o-Lite in Berkeley.

Cheers, Wayne

[m Ransley]

I agree with structolite, but for finish coat, drywall compound works easier.