Plaster and Drywall Repair in Cincinnati

Plaster repair in Cincinnati: fix the cause, then the ceiling

If your house went up before the 1930s, its walls and ceilings are most likely plaster on wood lath. Plaster was the standard interior finish for nearly every building until the 1930s or 40s, and a lot of it is still sound after a hundred years. When it cracks, bulges or sags, the real question is whether the plaster has let go of the lath. A crack on its own is usually cosmetic. A ceiling that has lost its grip can come down, and old three-coat plaster is heavy.

Swiss Masonry is a Cincinnati masonry contractor that also works as a general contractor, and plaster repair sits naturally beside the masonry: the same old houses, the same lime-based materials, and often the same leak behind both. We do plaster repair and plaster ceiling repair in older homes and buildings around Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, along with drywall repair and new drywall in remodels.

How plaster on lath holds on, and how it lets go

The plasterer pressed the first coat through the gaps between thin wood lath strips. What squeezed through slumped over the back of the lath and hardened into “keys.” Those keys hold the whole surface up. Over decades they break, and once enough of them go, a ceiling hangs only from the plaster around it.

What breaks the keys

• Water. A roof leak, a failed built-in gutter or a bathroom leak soaks plaster and lath, and the keys soften and snap.
• Movement. Settling, a sagging joist or heavy traffic in the room above flexes the ceiling every day.
• Vibration. Trucks on a brick street, nearby demolition, years of slammed doors.
• Old patches. Earlier repairs in the wrong material often pull away at their edges and take good plaster with them.

Signs worth a call

• A ceiling with a belly in it. Keep people and furniture out from under it until it’s looked at.
• Cracks that keep opening, or that step in height from one side to the other.
• Bulges on walls, often near window and door frames.
• Bubbling paint or white powdery deposits on plaster against an outside brick wall. That’s moisture carrying salts through the masonry.
• Grit or small chips on the floor in the morning.

Plaster ceiling repair, step by step

1. Protect the room. Floors and furniture covered, the work area sealed off with plastic, doorways closed so dust stays put.
2. Sounding survey. We tap the ceiling section by section and mark what sounds hollow. That map shows what is still keyed and what has let go, and it sets the scope and the price.
3. Reattach what can be saved. Where the surrounding plaster is solid, loose sections are drawn back tight to the lath with screws and plaster washers. Where a ceiling carries decorative paint worth saving, a plaster conservator can inject adhesive behind it while it is braced in place, and we’ll tell you if your ceiling calls for that.
4. Cut out what can’t. Plaster that has broken free comes out back to sound edges. Loose lath is re-nailed, and expanded metal lath goes over the wood lath for a stronger key.
5. Patch in layers. New plaster goes on in coats, each one stepped so it laps the old edge, and the surface follows the ceiling’s existing contour. A dead-flat patch on a gently wavy old ceiling stands out once it’s painted.
6. Bridge cracks and skim. Long cracks get fiberglass mesh set into a setting compound. Where a whole ceiling is crazed, a skim coat over everything gives one even surface, plaster washers included.
7. Prime and paint. An alkali-resistant primer first, then finish paint, so the repair disappears into the room.

Plaster or drywall? Picking the right repair

We would rather keep plaster where it can be kept. It’s hard, it deadens sound between rooms, and in an older Cincinnati house it fits the deep trim, the window casings and the rounded corners in a way drywall doesn’t. But it isn’t always the right answer, and we’ll tell you when it isn’t.

Drywall repair is the everyday side of this work: holes, split tape seams, water-stained ceilings, and the walls that go up during a home remodel or a kitchen remodel. Where new drywall meets old plaster, the board is shimmed out to plaster thickness so the wall reads as one surface.

Lead paint, dust and old houses

Old plaster has usually been painted many times over, and homes built before 1978 may carry lead paint. Federal rules, the EPA’s Renovation, Repair and Painting program, set lead-safe work practices for paid work that disturbs paint in pre-1978 housing and child-occupied buildings. Lead-safe work means the area is contained, surfaces are misted instead of dry-sanded, there is no torching or uncontrolled power sanding, waste is bagged inside the work area, and cleanup is by HEPA vacuum and wet wiping. If your house was built before 1978, ask us how that applies to your job before work is scheduled.

Old plaster dust can also carry decades of coal soot, and some mid-century plaster and texture coatings contained asbestos. If a material looks suspect, we stop and have it tested before it’s disturbed.

Stop the water before the plaster work

Water is behind most failed plaster ceilings. In older Cincinnati houses the usual sources are a leaking roof valley, a built-in box gutter whose lining has failed, a chimney with open joints, or a bathroom upstairs. Rain splashing off a patio against a brick wall can push dampness through to the plaster inside, too.

So we trace the leak before we schedule the plaster. A failed box gutter gets relined; see box gutter and soffit repair. Open brick joints get tuckpointing. If a storm started it, storm damage repair covers the outside of the house and how we write estimates an adjuster can follow. We do this work in older neighborhoods like Clifton, Over-the-Rhine and Hyde Park, and in Covington and Newport across the river.

Every job is priced after the owner sees it. Common masonry ranges are on our pricing page. Insured, with a certificate of insurance on request, and every repair carries our one-year workmanship warranty.