Randy’s Painting & Drywall

Allentown, Lehigh County

Plaster repair in Allentown, PA.

More than nineteen thousand Allentown homes predate 1940, and rowhouses and twins are the city's most common houses. Plaster on shared brick walls has its own causes of trouble, and repair starts with finding them.

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A room in an older house with patched, stained plaster walls and a radiator cover under the window.
Plaster walls, patched and stained, before the work.

Plaster repair for Allentown homes

More than nineteen thousand homes in the city were built before 1940, the years when plaster was the standard wall, and rowhouses and twins outnumber every other kind of house here. In the Census definition, attached houses share a common wall running from the ground to the roof, so a great deal of Allentown's old plaster is on walls that two households share.

Plaster on a party wall lives with two houses. It moves when either one settles, it can take on water from a neighbor's roof or gutter, and in a long, narrow rowhouse it is often the one unbroken wall in the room, so every old patch on it shows. Repairing it well means working out which of those is happening before anything is filled.

Allentown

Behind Old Allentown's brick fronts and slate mansards

Old Allentown's rows went up between the 1850s and the 1910s, the Old Fairgrounds between 1888 and 1910, and West Park mostly from 1895 to 1930, a spread that crosses the change from lime plaster to gypsum around 1900. In Allentown, mansards on rowhouse fronts were clad in slate, and the top-floor rooms behind them are usually the first to show a slipped slate or failed flashing, as a stain or a soft patch in the ceiling.

The masonry matters as much as the roof. The city's historic district guidelines advise against painting or sealing brick that was never painted, because coatings trap moisture and stop water and salts from evaporating out of the wall. Indoors, those salts surface on the plaster as a white powder or dry bubbles under the paint, and patching over them lasts only until the wall is wet again. Sound, soft mortar and working gutters come first.

A period foyer and staircase mid-renovation, the floor strewn with stripped material and a painter at work.
Before: a period foyer mid-renovation.

Worth knowing

  1. Ask next door

    A stain or crack on a party wall can begin in the house on the other side. A word with the neighbors about their roof, gutters or plumbing can spare you a repair that keeps coming back.

  2. Front rooms take the weather

    In a mid-row house the front room's only outside wall is the brick front, so a clogged gutter at the cornice spilling down it shows up on that room's plaster.

  3. No certificate for the inside

    In Old Allentown, the Old Fairgrounds and West Park, certificates of appropriateness cover exterior work seen from a public right-of-way. Plaster repair inside a house needs none.

The work

How the work goes

The same care on every job, in every town. The full guide to plaster repair.

The same period foyer finished: white walls, a white staircase and a hanging lantern over a pale floor.
After: the same foyer, finished.

  1. Find the cause

    Every repair starts with why the plaster failed: a leak, a settling corner, a ceiling carrying too much. Randy walks the rooms with you, and the walkthrough and written estimate are complimentary.

  2. Reattach what’s loose

    Plaster that has lost its keys but is otherwise sound can be drawn back to the lath with screws and broad plaster washers. It doesn’t have to come down.

  3. Bridge the cracks

    Cracks are opened slightly, bridged with fiberglass mesh tape and filled with setting-type compound, which hardens by chemical reaction and shrinks less than ordinary joint compound. A finer compound goes on last, because setting compound is hard to sand.

  4. Rebuild what’s missing

    Where plaster is gone down to the lath, the old edges get a bonding agent and the hole is built back up in layers, each stepped over the last. Larger openings can take a piece of board shimmed to the plaster’s thickness instead.

  5. Finish to the wall around it

    The repair is feathered into the old surface, or the whole wall is skimmed so old and new read as one. On a wavy old wall, the patch follows the wall’s contour; a dead-flat patch would stand out.

Questions

Plaster repair, Allentown.

White powder keeps coming through the paint on the inside of our rowhouse's front wall. Is the plaster failing?

The plaster is more likely the messenger. The powder is usually salts carried out of the brick by moisture, so the cause is outside: open mortar joints, a coating on brick that was meant to stay bare, or a gutter spilling down the front. Once the wall stays dry, crumbling or loose plaster is cut back and repaired, and the rest can be primed and painted.

The ceiling of our top-floor room behind the mansard is stained. Where is the water coming from?

Usually from just above it: a slipped or broken slate on the mansard, the flashing where it meets the roof behind, or the gutter along the cornice at its foot. The leak is found and fixed first. Once the plaster has dried, stained but sound areas are sealed and painted, and soft or sagging ones are rebuilt.

The other half of our twin was gutted to drywall. Can our plaster still be saved?

Usually. Your face of the shared wall keeps its own plaster, though demolition next door can crack it or shake sections loose. Those areas are reattached or rebuilt like any other damage, and the sound plaster around them can stay.

More in Allentown

Other services here.

  1. Level 5 drywall finishA skim coat over the entire surface, for walls that hold up under raking light and dark paint.
  2. Skim coatingRough, patched or uneven walls resurfaced smooth, often after wallpaper comes down.
  3. Interior paintingWalls, ceilings, trim, doors and millwork, prepared properly and finished clean.
  4. Exterior paintingSiding, trim, porches, stucco and brick, prepared to stand up to Pennsylvania weather.
  5. Drywall installation & repairNew drywall hung, taped and finished; cracks, holes and water damage repaired invisibly.
  6. Drywall texture matching & removalTexture matched so repairs disappear, applied where you want it, or taken off for a smooth wall.
  7. Popcorn ceiling removalOld acoustic texture taken down and the ceiling finished smooth.
  8. Wallpaper removalOld wallpaper and wall linings stripped without tearing up the wall beneath.
  9. Wood stainingDecks, porch floors, doors and trim, inside and out, stained by hand.

Consultation

Request a private consultation.

Private walkthrough & written estimate, complimentary. Tell us a little about the house and the rooms, and Randy will be in touch to arrange a time.

Hours
Monday – Friday8:30 AM – 5:30 PMSaturday10 AM – 3 PMSundayClosed
Service area
Easton, Bethlehem, Allentown and the greater Lehigh Valley; Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Fully insured — proof on request. Residential and commercial.

Randy’sPainting & DrywallReply card
The project
Preferred contact

Walkthrough & written estimate, complimentary.