Q: The walls of our 1938 San Francisco home are lath and plaster, with a canvas-like fabric over the plaster. There are cracks in the plaster, which can be seen through the paint as raised creases in ...

Dear James: We are planning a substantial room addition to our dream home. We are not on a tight budget, and we want everything done right. Should we use plaster walls or standard drywall walls? — ...

Q:We have a small 1924 cottage in the El Cerrito flatlands a little east of the El Cerrito Mall. Our lot has a minor slope, and we have a high water table. Our house continues to shift and settle, ...

Lath-and-plaster walls are common in older houses (built late 18th Century until the early 1950’s, when drywall became standard). Whether you want to hang a picture, mirror or kitchen cabinet, ...

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. We just bought our first house, an American Foursquare, dated 1917. It has been vacant for several years and the interior is not in the best condition. We'd like to gut it to get rid of the sagging ...

Drywall is common and ubiquitous in commercial and residential buildings today. Many of us barely think about it until we have to repair a hole smashed in it. However, drywall has not been around ...

I just bought my first house and am getting ready to run cat5e jacks to the rooms. I have experience crimping and punching things down, but my experience is limited to running cable in nice drop ...

Removing the plaster from a vintage house is a nasty job. It generates yards of debris and creates clouds of dust that go everywhere. We have some advice: don’t assume the plaster has to go. In fact, ...

Houses around Reading will have many sorts of walls from plastered brick and mortar to stud walling with lath and plaster or plasterboard. Putting fixings into some walls presents DIYers with an ...

Q. My wife and I removed beadboard wainscoting in a house we just bought. In the process we destroyed the wall. The beadboard was glued on, and when it came down, so did a thin coat of something. I ...