Finishing a new wall or room with plaster or joint compound takes practice. If you have no experience with plaster or its near relative, joint compound, don’t learn in your living room. Experiment ...

A: It depends on the type and size of the crack. Hairline cracks take only a little patching plaster. Larger cracks require reinforcement with mesh tape. Cracks larger still, where the plaster keys ...

There’s just one problem with plaster (which was the wall finish of choice before drywall rose to popularity in the 60s). If you have a home with plastered walls, it’s so darn easy for a nice smooth ...

Q: I took off the wallpaper in my turn-of-the-century house to reveal real plaster. It has never been painted, and it is a little rough. I plan to paint the walls. When we filled several holes with ...

Q-I have several large patches to repair in my plaster walls and would like to do a smooth job. I filled in the first patch with several layers of patching plaster, but then I had a tough job ...

Save the plaster! This might have been the rallying cry of Julia Child, were she a preservationist rather than a chef. “Preserving nice plaster work, if possible, is always worth it,” reBUILD Workshop ...

Before you do any plaster patching, rid the rooms of any residual lead. If you try to vacuum up chips or dust, you must use a special HEPA filter-equipped vacuum cleaner. Some tool rental stores rent ...