Read Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 of this story. When it comes to real estate in a city like ours, with housing that spans the space of a few hundred years, there are two types of people in the world: ...

Q. We just bought our first house, an American Foursquare, dated 1917. It has been vacant for several years and the interior is not in the best condition. We'd like to gut it to get rid of the sagging ...

Read Part 1, Part 2 and Part 4 of this story. So you live in an older home with plaster walls and ceilings, and you need to renovate. You need to run new electric lines, or repair plumbing, or perhaps ...

Q Am I right that when sections of plaster break away from the lath, an accepted repair technique is to roughly fill in those gaps with drywall and then drywall over the whole wall or ceiling? — M.H., ...

Plastering has been around for ages. The Egyptians plastered their houses and tombs with a lime-gypsum material similar to modern plaster. The Greeks and Romans also recognized the sanitary value of ...

I tend to stare at the ceiling a lot. I think it’s only to be expected. If you sleep on your back or lie on the couch reading Jane Austin (as we all must), you’re bound to spend a certain amount of ...

Q: Our 1920s bungalow has a small front closet that is punched out from the wall of the house so that the box of the closet extends past the exterior walls. This leaves the three walls and floor in ...

As I write, I am waiting between coats of plaster. Plastering can be rewarding, but it does involve a lot of waiting; either for one coat to set before spreading the next, or for just the right moment ...