Q: I recently moved into a house built in 1916 in Albany. Some of the house has been remodeled, but the rooms that haven't have plaster walls. I've been told that plaster cracks often due to settling.

The unmistakable period feel of an old house is often directly related to the beauty and the character of its plaster walls. While it is not recommended that the average old-house owner try to ...

Most of the time we think of home improvement as a process of building or fixing things. But, there’s a time to take-or break-things apart: demolition. The demolition process, in fact, is something ...

You certainly don’t want it in your lungs, so the first step in removing plaster is to get yourself a respirator mask—not one of those paper masks, but a good-quality mask with a filter. Wear eye ...

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 ...

Q. We're buying a house that is probably close to 100 years old. It has been vacant for the past several years and needs a good amount of cleaning up and fixing up. One thing we're concerned about is ...

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., ...

Q: We recently purchased a 1926 colonial house with mostly horsehair plaster walls. This is my first experience with plaster walls, and I’m afraid they are going to crumble when I hang artwork, etc.