Pro tip: I had to patch a ceiling in a 1950s house in Tacoma last Tuesday and the old plaster was a beast. What's your go-to method for blending new drywall with that old, hard stuff?

3 comments

3 Comments

Reminds me how we're always trying to blend new fixes with old foundations. You can sand and mud all day, but that seam still shows through the paint. Makes you respect the original craft, even when it's a pain to work with.

evand652mo ago

Read an article about old ship restorations where they said the original wood joints were so tight you couldn't fit a piece of paper between them. Modern tools can't even copy that level of fit. It's a humbling reminder that some old methods were just better, even if our materials are stronger now. Trying to match that kind of work always leaves a mark, like you said. Makes you wonder what skills we've lost for good.

noahw5316d agoProlific Poster

Huh, I actually gotta push back on that a little. I've had pretty good luck using durabond 90 for the first coat on old plaster patches - it grabs hard and doesn't shrink the same way regular mud does. Sure, you'll always see a slight texture difference under direct light (especially with those old horsehair plasters), but if you feather it way out to like 18 inches on each side and use a thin skim coat of all-purpose over the top, it blends in way better than you'd think. The real trick is to not treat it like drywall at all, you know? Pretend you're doing plaster work and use really thin passes instead of piling it on thick.