1940 house, cracks on plaster. Keep cracks, fix or replace with sheet rock? (foundation, insulated)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
We are going though a kitchen and bathroom remodel of our 1st house. It's a 1940 marina style San Francisco house. Some of the rooms have a lot of hairline cracks on the walls and ceiling. I hear that's normal and happens when house sets and plaster cracks.
As I am walking through the rest of the house with architect to see what needs to be done in rooms, he says we can fix the cracks but they could come back. Could be 1 week or years, but it's likely to come back.
So he suggests as an option replacing all plaster walls with sheet rock. He says it will be brand new, no risk of cracks, we could add insulation and do a full rewiring since it would be exposed. Adding the sheetrock will be $8k+ for the entire house and we are already over budget.
I wonder, in SF there are a lot of older homes, I can't imagine that everyone is replacing their plaster with sheetrock, but I don't know. I also hear that sheet rock doesn't have the same "feel" as plaster. We have a cute house with molding on all the ceilings with cool "art-decoish" details, and not sure how that will look with sheet rock walls under it.
Should we leave the cracks as "charm" of older house, try to fix with the risk of coming back, or put sheetrock?
BTW: We plan to do foundation work in 1 year. So my concern about fixing the cracks now is, wouldn't structural work on the house bring cracks back and many more new ones?
What kind of foundation work?? I would do that FIRST before attempting any other remodeling, especially walls or floors.
Are the cracks cosmetic?
You are already over budget. I vote no. I grew up in a house with plaster walls, and they held up amazingly well. It's difficult to hang art on them, but that's the worst problem we had.
Sure, it would be nice to do, but can you realistically afford it?
So he suggests as an option replacing all plaster walls with sheet rock. He says it will be brand new, no risk of cracks
HA! Drywall cracks too. And you get nail pops unless you do it with all screws, though that might be less in an old house. It's easier to repair though.
Quote:
we could add insulation and do a full rewiring since it would be exposed.
If you have to open up a wall for these reasons anyway it might make sense to replace it rather than repair it. But $8k to replace plaster just because it has small cracks makes no sense at all.
Quote:
BTW: We plan to do foundation work in 1 year. So my concern about fixing the cracks now is, wouldn't structural work on the house bring cracks back and many more new ones?
Yes, and that's true with drywall too. Makes sense to delay this until after the foundation work.
There are a lot of line cracks in the rooms. On the ceiling there is an area with more of intertwined crack lines, almost looking like it's going to chip off.
We are doing remodel on kitchen and bathroom, and will repaint the house and refinish floors. GC thinks if we don't replace with sheet rock, kitchen and bathroom will look all new and smooth different from rooms with all the cracks. And he says we can try to fix the cracks, but painter job would cost more and there is a chance we get half of the cracks back in a few years.
A benefit of replacing the plaster is that we could rewire all the knob and tube wiring, put outlets everywhere we want, and on we would get rid of all lead paint on the walls. For the ceiling he is recommending putting a sheet under the existing ceiling.
I don't think he is saying this just to get more work as he doesn't charge profit on top of sub work.
But I am thinking, $8500 for sheet tock all the walls, plus $8500 to rewire....that's a lot of money I was not planning on spending.
About the foundation work I mentioned on OP - Our plan is to in 1 year add a 3rd bedroom in the garage and we would need to replace foundation on the back of the house.
I don't have a lot of experience with San Francisco but I do have relatives in San Diego and the seismic activity does tend to make certain kinds of repairs to older homes futile. From what I understand the steps needed to isolate plaster walls to be immune from cracking are far more costly than "regular" plaster repair. If budget does not currently allow such things I might just leave well enough alone..
The first thing the OP should consider is if this is done will it be the best thing for the family? Will the family benefit from the upgrades? Second, will the surrounding neighborhood return some of this cost should the home be sold?
Drywall is a more forgiving interior finish product, and able to react better under movement either seasonal, or seismic. Upgrading from knob & tube would be a huge consideration in safety alone. Outlet placement is really not so much choice of the owner, but more code driven. The plumbing water should be upgraded at this time as well.
This really would be considered an entire interior gut. Would the existing doors be used, and so on. This could turn out to be a really big undertaking when the home could be occupied for a short time, and a move to a newer area like Brisbane, or Redwood City to get a home with newer construction standards. Not to mention get out of the fog!
What are others in the area doing with these 40's row houses? Are they worth enough that others are doing a similar thing? As I started with, this is really a personal decision the OP must make about what is best for his family. There's a reason it was so cheap. Almost anything in San Francisco for under a million comes at a price!
Location: When things get hot they expand. Im not fat. Im hot.
2,513 posts, read 6,323,996 times
Reputation: 5317
Quote:
Originally Posted by skubaman
We are going though a kitchen and bathroom remodel of our 1st house. It's a 1940 marina style San Francisco house. Some of the rooms have a lot of hairline cracks on the walls and ceiling. I hear that's normal and happens when house sets and plaster cracks.
As I am walking through the rest of the house with architect to see what needs to be done in rooms, he says we can fix the cracks but they could come back. Could be 1 week or years, but it's likely to come back.
So he suggests as an option replacing all plaster walls with sheet rock. He says it will be brand new, no risk of cracks, we could add insulation and do a full rewiring since it would be exposed. Adding the sheetrock will be $8k+ for the entire house and we are already over budget.
I wonder, in SF there are a lot of older homes, I can't imagine that everyone is replacing their plaster with sheetrock, but I don't know. I also hear that sheet rock doesn't have the same "feel" as plaster. We have a cute house with molding on all the ceilings with cool "art-decoish" details, and not sure how that will look with sheet rock walls under it.
Should we leave the cracks as "charm" of older house, try to fix with the risk of coming back, or put sheetrock?
BTW: We plan to do foundation work in 1 year. So my concern about fixing the cracks now is, wouldn't structural work on the house bring cracks back and many more new ones?
I really appreciate your opinion.
Thanks
Thats a lot of $$$$$ just to make an old house look new if the cracks are just cosmetic. If it were me I would fill them with paintable caulk and paint. They might come back. They might not.
I would wait and see first. $8k buys a lot of paint. In any case I would wait till after the foundation repair.
As for the knob and tube any electrician worth his salt should be able to do new wiring without gutting a house back to the studs.
Im an old house peep myself. 1850's. Personally I hate drywall with a passion.
Im curious. Why did you buy a older house with charm and character if youre planning on rippin its guts out. Im just askin.
Youre right sheet rock wont have the same "feel" as plaster. Also theres a chance it might not match up with the molding on all the ceilings or with those cool "art-decoish" details. Sheet rock is flat. Plaster conforms.
Thanks guys, I am with you. I would prefer to not remove the plaster and just fix what can be fixed as we paint the rooms. On the other hand, I think I mentioned that we will likely replace the foundation next year to build living space downstairs. The GC is saying that that work alone might cause cracks to reappear and many news ones. Should I not even fix the existing cracks if more will appear? Or fix what we have now, and see what happens IF we really go through the dowstairs job?
We had to replace all of the plaster with sheet rock on the whole South side of our house on every floor. It's not the same. Give me plaster walls any day. I've had to tape a lot of cracks over the 20+ years we've been here. It's not that hard to do and way cheaper than the thousands of dollars your contractor hopes you'll pay him. (We insulated the house from the outside and had it blown in.)
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Keep the plaster.
We had to replace all of the plaster with sheet rock on the whole South side of our house on every floor. It's not the same. Give me plaster walls any day. I've had to tape a lot of cracks over the 20+ years we've been here. It's not that hard to do and way cheaper than the thousands of dollars your contractor hopes you'll pay him. (We insulated the house from the outside and had it blown in.)
