Brooklyn Elite Drywall restores the original lath-and-plaster walls and ceilings found throughout the borough's older housing stock. Plaster fails differently than drywall, cracking, delaminating from the lath, and going hollow as the keys break loose over decades. Rather than tearing out a wall that could be saved, we re-anchor loose plaster, stabilize the cracks, and skim the surface back to smooth. It is preservation-minded work that keeps the character of a pre-war apartment or brownstone intact.
When plaster pulls away from the lath, the keys that hold it have snapped and the wall sounds hollow when tapped. We reattach the loose field with plaster washers and screws that pull it back tight to the lath before any surface work begins. This stabilization step is what stops the recurring cracking that surface patching alone never fixes.
Structural settling cracks in a brownstone reopen if they are simply filled, so we treat the movement, not just the gap. We rout out the crack, bridge it with mesh or paper tape set in setting-type compound, and float the area wide so the repair flexes as one with the wall. Feathering the compound well past the crack keeps the fix invisible once painted.
Once stabilized, an old plaster wall can be brought back to a modern smooth surface with a full skim coat. We bond, float, and sand the wall flat with joint compound, preserving the original plaster while giving you a clean plane for paint. This is the go-to approach for wavy, chalky, or long-neglected pre-war walls.
Renovated Brooklyn homes often have a mix of old plaster and newer drywall meeting in the same room. We tie the two materials together with proper taping and a continuous skim so the transition disappears. The finished wall reads as one uniform surface regardless of what is behind it.
Pre-war plaster repair takes us into the older housing stock of Park Slope, Bay Ridge, Midwood, Bath Beach, and Bensonhurst, and to brownstones throughout Brooklyn.