David wrote:

Anyone out there still know anything about repairing plaster walls?
I have a 1920s home that had and still has in some other places cracks
running up the walls and branching out. I've already had the
foundation checked and it's ok, but inside they look terrible.
Apparently just old settling.
We just bought the home and the prior owners had tried to patch the
cracks by it looks like putting one of the mesh drywall tape all over
the cracks and spackling either drywall putty or plaster all over it.
So it not only looks bad, but basically, the cracks were just covered
over by about 1/2 inch thick compound that is bulged out from teh
wall, that only draws your attention to where the cracks were and
looks terrible, and in some of the repairs, the cracks are just coming
back through the repair.
I had our general contractor look at it and his solution was to tear
the whole wall out and sheetrock it, which seems to be the only thing
that most construction guys know these days, but it won't match the
texture of the other walls, and I would like to keep the lath and
plaster where ever possible in the house.

I bought a home build in 1910 and many of the walls appear to have drywall
over plaster. When I was correcting some of the outlets with hot/neutral
reversed, I noticed extenders to bring outlets and wall plates to the
drywall surface. I figure this gives the home thermal mass, so it
maintains an even temperature when heated by steam, and does not heat up so
quickly on summer days (suck the heat out with a fan at night, so A/C is
rarely needed).

There are things that can be applied to the walls to give them texture.
When my sister build their home in the late 70's they used something
pigmented applied with a rag or sponge that gave the drywall sort of a
stucco appearence. So even if it got chipped or worn, it would still have
the same color.

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David Efflandt http://www.de-srv.com/