Randy’s Painting & Drywall

Doylestown, Bucks County

Plaster repair in Doylestown, PA.

About three in ten homes in Doylestown borough predate 1940, from 1830s side-hall houses to frame Victorians with porches. The township next door is almost all drywall, so this work is mostly a borough matter.

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A white coffered ceiling with carved corbels above an arched window, a scaffold still standing below.
Coffers and corbels over an arched window.

Plaster repair for Doylestown homes

The borough's historic district counted 1,190 buildings in 1985, and about two-thirds of them went up between 1851 and 1910; across the borough, about three in ten homes predate 1940. Plaster was the wall throughout those years. Doylestown Township, built mostly between 1960 and 1999, is the opposite case, so plaster repair there usually means one of the few houses that predate the subdivisions.

In the borough, the question is what the plaster sits on. The 1985 count found 650 frame buildings, 345 brick and 84 stone, with the rest stuccoed or other masonry, so more than half the district's buildings carry their plaster on lath, while the older brick and fieldstone houses often have it laid directly on the masonry. The two fail differently and are repaired differently.

Doylestown

Late-Federal parlors and Victorian frame: two kinds of plaster wall

The 1830s, when the town became a borough, filled it with late-Federal houses: two and a half stories, three bays, a side hall and two parlors one behind the other. Where those houses are brick or stone, plaster often sits right on the masonry of the outside walls, and on lath across the partitions. The wide opening between double parlors, and any doorway cut through in a later remodel, is where diagonal stress cracks tend to start.

After the Civil War, frame became the fashion for larger houses, and neighborhoods built from the 1870s to 1900, East Oakland and Maple Avenues among them, are mostly frame, often with front porches. Their plaster hangs on wood lath nailed to the studs, and it fails where the lath does: under an old bathroom leak, below a porch roof that drained into the wall, or wherever rusted nails and broken keys have let a ceiling begin to drop.

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

Worth knowing

  1. Plastered fronts hide cracks

    Many early fieldstone and brick houses were plastered outside as well. Cracks in that outer coat let rain into the wall, and the first sign is often a stain on the plaster inside.

  2. Parlors that read as one room

    In a double-parlor house the two rooms are seen together through the opening, so a repaired wall is finished to match the room beyond it as well as its own.

  3. Half the borough is postwar

    The borough's median house was built in 1962, so many of its homes are drywall too; the plaster is in the older ones, roughly three houses in ten.

The work

How the work goes

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

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.

  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, Doylestown.

A crack runs up from the corner of the opening between our parlors. Is the house settling?

Possibly, but the opening itself is often the cause. A wide opening, or a doorway cut through without a proper beam above it, concentrates load at its corners, and diagonal cracks start there. A stable hairline is repaired like any crack; one that keeps widening, or a door that has started to bind, should be seen by a structural engineer first.

Is plaster repair worth it in a Doylestown Township house?

Only if the house has plaster, and few do: fewer than three township homes in a hundred predate 1940, and four in five were built between 1960 and 1999 with drywall. In those houses, cracks and holes are a drywall repair. The township's older houses get the same plaster care as the borough's.

Does the borough's review board need to approve plaster repairs in a historic district house?

No. Doylestown's Historic Architectural Review Board reviews exterior features that can be seen from a public street or way, and interiors are exempt. If fixing the cause of the damage means changing something outside, such as siding or a porch, that part goes to the board; repainting alone does not.

More in Doylestown

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.