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 ...

Repairing a plaster ceiling with plaster is the best way to maintain an older home’s integrity. Step 1: Plastering is a messy job. Prepare the work space by removing furniture and covering everything ...

Q:We are getting ready to repaint our home office. The walls and ceiling were cracked during the 1989 quake and poorly patched before we moved in. We had the roof redone this summer, and the banging ...

More than eight years ago, leaks at the Old First Reformed Church in Park Slope caused a portion of the ceiling to collapse. Or so they thought. “Our approach in a situation like that, if we don’t ...

Ken Wildes crouches next to a cardboard box and plucks out a rose hand-formed from clay. He holds the rose in his fingertips and points out the flaws. See how the petals are pressed together? A ...

Thirty-five years ago, when John Doherty was doing rehab work for Campus Apartments, removing old plasterwork to make way for drywall, he was struck by the beauty of the buildings’ antique plaster ...

Plaster lasted a century. We traded it for something that dents in a decade.