Plastering Services

Yes, but not until the water is dealt with. Patching over an active leak buys a few weeks and then the repair fails in the same spot, usually worse. Once the source is fixed and the area has dried out, the damaged material gets cut back to something sound rather than skimmed over. Older homes are a separate case. Solid lime plaster on lath moves and breathes differently to modern plasterboard, and treating it like a sheet repair is how you end up with a patch that cracks around its own edges.

A taped finish treats the joints and screw heads only, then the sheet face is painted as it comes. A set finish puts a thin coat of hard plaster across the whole wall, so the joints and the field become one continuous surface. The difference shows up under light raking along a wall, which is exactly where a hallway window or a row of downlights will put it. For most ceilings and feature walls a set finish is worth it. On a garage or a storeroom it is not.

Long enough for the moisture to leave, which depends on the weather more than the calendar. A few days in warm dry conditions, considerably longer through a Melbourne winter in a room with no heating and poor airflow. Painting early traps moisture behind the film and you get patchy sheen or peeling later. New plaster also drinks paint, so it needs a sealer coat first. Skipping the sealer is the most common reason a finish coat dries uneven.

Often, though it depends what is there. Standard profiles off a merchant's shelf almost never match Victorian or Edwardian cornice, which was run by hand and varies house to house and sometimes room to room. Where enough original survives, a mould can be taken off a clean run and new lengths cast from it. Where very little survives, the honest answer is that a close match is achievable and an exact one may not be. It is worth deciding that before demolition, not after.