Amazing Plaster Washers

Room remodeling goes a lot faster with no putsy plumbing or electrical work. These are the before shots of the nursery (complete with Frankie's stuff still in the middle). I swear I have some of the other side of the room but my photo files are all unorganized after the camera fiasco. They get the point across.

and the closet.

The insulation plugs are all still obvious, paint from 1943 in the closet, slightly newer in the bedroom and the gross mismatched carpet seen here. Definitely NOT a cute or even usable nursery.

The biggest dilemna was the slightly wiggly plaster on the ceiling. The plaster keys had pulled away from the lathing in several spots from moisture (the roof had been in disrepair at least once in the house's lifetime), settling and just because it is 100 years old. My dad's plan was to knock down the loose areas, which included most anything that was at an angle. Ugh, what a mess and a lot of work! There were only a few old and somewhat repaired cracks in those areas plus nothing we replace it with will ever be as good as that 100 year old plaster so I felt it a shame to knock it all down. There had to be SOMETHING easy out there to help us with this problem and with a little Google search I found these glorious objects known as plaster washers.

 Everything I read about them said I wouldn't be able to find them at the hardware store. But surely the Ace down the block has them? With all of these old houses in the neighborhood, it seems like something they should have. Everyone was correct. We got strange looks for asking and one guy had to look them up online to see if they did exist. He said they sounded pretty nifty but they didn't have any. Thank goodness for the internet. A quick trip to Amazon and they were at my doorstep less than a week later.
They supposedly will hold when just screwed to the lathing but since our plaster wasn't ridiculously loose or cracked into tiny sections my dad searched down the studs and screwed most of the washers into those. After about 15 minutes the ceiling was just as secure, if not more so, than it was 100 years ago. As I said, our ceiling was not horrible so I can't vouch for how they would work on super loose plaster but they worked fantastically well here.  For now anyways!!

  

 Here are some in action on the wall in the closet. They went in so fast I left the room to work on another project, came back and my dad had started plastering over them already! 

Some partially plastered washers on the ceiling. 

Whew! Dilemma solved and a lot of extra work and mess avoided!