How to fix plaster ceiling

[demarpaint]

Originally Posted By: JTK
Originally Posted By: demarpaint

Rock lath is something that looks like drywall with holes in it and then plastered over, much newer than wood lath. They also used wire lath as well.


I've owned two homes with that. Both built in the mid 1950's. Mine were built with 2'x4' sections of 'drywall' with two different coats of plaster material over the top of that. That stuff wouldn't de-laminate even when soaking wet!! Walls were hard as a rock, super thick in areas and a pain in the stones to ever have to patch an area with a standard piece of drywall.

I always marveled at the time/work they put into stuff back then.


Given a choice I'd take a nice rock lath job that didn't have Casein or Calcimine paint applied to it. In the perfect world a rock lath plaster job with an oil primer and latex top coat would be nice. Next in line would be drywall skim coated, oil primed, and top coated in latex paint.

 

[ram_man]

The first picture was a portion where it was peeling and I peeled it back until it stopped just coming off. You can see on the ceiling where it cracked all the seams of whatever board material they used (dry wall) maybe?
It would be nice to fix it without having to spend tons of money.

 

[demarpaint]

The ceiling doesn't look that bad and can be fixed. I laid out how to fix it above, use either method. The crack must be re-taped with fiber glass mesh tape. It appears, at least from this lousy monitor the ceiling has been repaired before, and will require you to do a bit of decorative texture work to blend in the repair work. You can get a scrap of drywall and practice on there. There are different sand textures available in a powder form which can be mixed with paint and joint compound in varying amounts and applied if needed. Time and patience is what is needed. If lead concerns you, you can test for it, and take appropriate precautionary measures to protect you and your family.