Any plaster experts :-)

piggy73

Any plaster experts out there ?

We had some rain damage to our plaster work over our fire place area in our top bedroom.

Insurance company have accepted claim & reapairs are currently underway via a company organised by our insurance.

Our house is very old & it has that pinky coloured plaster (with the horse hair in it).

The company have only replaced the areas of plaster where there were obvious damp patches - so there is now a mix of modern & old plaster. Is this likely to cause any problems ? I just wonder if the whole wall should have been redone with the same plaster ?

After repainting the whole wall the paint seems to be peeling only where the old plaster is ?

Also some of the old plaster work seems to have a hollow sound when tapped - a friend mentioned that this indicates the plaster is coming away from the wall. I wonder if I should expect this to be replaced i.e would the damp have caused this ?

I'm just trying to get some information before speaking to them about this. So far they have been quite approachable & their work so far has been fine.

Many thanks for any information.

nicebelvoir

Patching plaster is standard, if it's a relatively small amount. I don't think you should have any problems mixing the old and the new, as long as it's a good job. It's an insurance job so I doubt the insurer will want to do more work that is strictly necessary.

Not sure why the paint is peeling, but if it's old plaster it could have been covered with a lot of different paints over the years and these could be giving you problems. Not to mention things like grease that could have built up on it. Did you prepare the wall before it was painted (wash it or even sand it)? Did the plasterers splash any of it with a PVA solution (used to help the new plaster but they could have splashed it about onto the old wall)?

Your friend is correct that the hollow sound is the plaster coming loose from the wall, very normal for old plaster and not much you can do about it, except replaster it all.
Repopulate Form

Staciep88

My OH is a plasterer and he is always 'patching up' so I should think that it would be fine.

nickj_2

you may find that the water leak has loosened the paint from the old plaster
underneath the peeling paint is probably whitewash or similar - if you give peeled area a rub with your hand it will be powdery and come off .
modern water based emulsion paints do not stick to this ,
the best result would be to wash it all of or try a powdery suface/ stabilizing primer
something like this should help https://www.dulux.co.uk/products/info/plaster_sealer.jsp