Editor’s note: Welcome to the 62nd installment of Brownstone Boys Reno, a reader renovation diary about renovating a brownstone in Bed Stuy. See the first one here. They also blog at ...

Q: The walls of our 1938 San Francisco home are lath and plaster, with a canvas-like fabric over the plaster. There are cracks in the plaster, which can be seen through the paint as raised creases in ...

I have heard that there are many different definitions of “skim coating” for plaster walls. I am meeting with contractors and I would like to know (from somebody with experience) what the correct way ...

DEAR DESIGNER: We recently moved into an old house. One of the bedrooms has fancy plasterwork on the walls that is dated and busy. What can I do to hide it? Tearing down the wall is not an option at ...

IF you live in an older home, chances are you have ugly, bumpy walls. For some unknown reason there used to be a time when plasterers thought it was the ‘in’ thing to give walls a textured finish. It ...

Dear James: I have an old house with plaster walls and many cracks that need to be repaired. How can I fix these so they stay fixed and are invisible? — Julianne T. Dear Julianne: Many older houses ...

Q:I live in a home built in 1979 and want to create a smoother surface on my walls. They were finished with a textured finish of long strokes of finishing mud, which I have heard called a skip-trough ...

Believe it or not, there are ways to smooth walls without plastering. Whether you are redoing one room or a gigantic whole-house renovation, plastering walls is one of those tasks that even ...