How to Repair Plaster Walls | This Old House

you'll notice that there's a very large crack here nice and a lot of movement in the wall yeah there is a lot of movement on the wall what i did is i brought a sample to show you how this house is plastered here's the plaster now let's look inside the wall and you can see the lath now the lath is about an inch and a quarter by three eighths of an inch thick there's a space between each one of them that's so when the plaster forces the plaster on the wall he squeezes the plaster through these little spaces forming keys that lock the plaster to the wall well as the house moves over time you get some separation between the plaster and the lat and cracking occurs all right now we're ready to reattach the plaster to the lead using a specially designed adhesive now the first thing i want to do is i want to drill a series of holes along each side of the crack using a masonry bit now why are we using a masonry i want to use a masonry bit because it will cut through the plaster but it won't cut a hole through the lath because that will create a hole and the glue will go through that hole oh now that's a void that's between the lath now what i want to do is i want to mark that hole because i want to make sure i don't apply any adhesive in there okay i just move down a little bit there's a lad now come down about three inches to the next last there's another lab come down here now i can drill along that at a level line and i should hit that left same thing here all right the next thing we want to do is vacuum out all of these holes to clean out the loose debris we're going to inject the adhesive into each hole using a caulking gun but before we can do that we have to use this conditioner that the manufacturer supplies in each hole prepping the surface of the lath and the back side of the plaster simply going to hold the bottle against the hole give it two squeezes now anything that runs down the wall take a damp sponge and wipe it away to mark where i want to cut the tip of the adhesive tube i simply hold the gun up against the wall the tip in the hole i mark it with my knife bring it down and cut the tip off straight now how much should i be shooting in each hole one good squeeze i see it's coming out a little bit yeah it's going to come out a little bit let it go right in the hole now we're ready to snug the plaster back up to the left to do that i'm going to use these plastic rings with drywall screws now these look bigger than the old buttons well they are but these are actually just used for clamping it until the adhesive dries so i bring it in and gently bring it in now watch the adhesive come out of the hole see okay all right now i don't want to make it too tight i'm going to go up with the crack again now that the adhesive has dried we're ready to remove the clamps on this wall now what i want you to do is take a six inch putty knife and i want you to scrape off all the high points while you're doing that i'm going to get some joint compound all right i've got some joint compound on my hawk what i'm going to use is this six inch knife i'm going to simply spread it on the wall filling the holes and the voids smoothing the wall out what you're going to do is wait overnight until a joint compound dries sand it lightly give it another coat then you're ready for paint

Channel: This Old House

Views: 1,114,563

Keywords: This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, Episode, TV Show, Plaster, Do It Yourself Repair, plaster wall, cracked wall, loose plaster, repair plaster wall, paint, home, house, Tom silva, tom silva this old house, tom silva house, tom silva construction, tom silva tools, tommy silva

Id: P4D0sESi5So

Length: 4min 7sec (247 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 24 2014