Remember the ceiling Butter was afraid might fall down on her?
Well we got back to The Royal on Saturday and it was still in place, but the plaster did need to be re-secured to the lath or stud behind the surface.
Last Saturday night we walked into the local Home Depot (which we like to call "d'po") with a list a mile long, but what we were most anxious to get were these plaster buttons, or washers, that our contractor friends and dads had been telling us about and that we then read up on. We figured it would be easy -- there are a LOT of houses as old as ours in the area, so we figured everyone knew about these things. It seems we were wrong, or we were asking the wrong people. We had plenty of men in d'po looking at and talking to us like we were silly little city girls who had no idea what we were talking about. The same thing happened at the local hardware store. Butter was beginning to think that they were made up, so she went back to the information super highway and googled "plaster buttons" and the first place they popped up was at a hardware store in Philadelphia -- one neighborhood over from where her mom lives. Mama Butter scooped them up and brought them to us on Saturday morning.
These little washer things full of holes are miracle workers! They pulled the loose plaster to the lath and secured the walls -- genius! Spackling over them was a cinch and now the ceiling is good to go -- no more fear of a Chicken Little falling sky.
We have lots of places to use these throughout the house -- many areas where the plaster is pulling away from the lath. But these plaster washers are the way to go -- they're saving us a ton of money and time, allowing us to keep the plaster walls and not have to go through the process of tearing out the plaster and replacing it with drywall. Yeah!
2 comments:
Did you buy the plaster washers at Killian's Hardware in Chestnut Hill? They are a bit of a hike for me, but they seem to be the local source. -don
hi don- yes my mom stopped by killians to pick up the plaster buttons. after an internet search, that was the first place that came up and it happened to be the most convenient place. we bought a whole sleeve and have more than half left for more projects. killian's is great i remember going as a kid with my dad when he was renovating my childhood home.
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