The Problem with Plaster (Home projects story 2)

The problem with plaster is that it’s really hard to work with. My house (built in 1917) is equipped with plaster walls. The exterior walls are plaster and brick. Undoubtedly, you understand how difficult it might be to hang something as simple as a picture on these walls.

Part of my miniature home makeover was to hang stuff on the walls. Andy hung our 30 lbs mirror in our front room by using his trusty drill with the masonry bit (this was on a wall that had brick 1 ½ inches in. As I don’t relish using power tools, I decided to stick with interior walls (plaster sans the brick) and use an old fashioned hammer and nails.

First was the kitchen. I decided to do several pictures of fun places we’ve visited. Out of the 8 frames I wanted to hang, I went through 22 nails (many bent, few victorious), 12 holes (way less than I was anticipating), and two applications of putty to hide mis-measured holes. All that and 2 hours later, my travel wall was complete!

Then I was on to the bedroom. The beautiful room that was painted in this blog now needed some stuff on the walls. I managed to get one nail in on my first try, another picture could be hung on an already existing nail, and I turned to the north wall to hang two small pictures.

I had forgotten that this was once the exterior wall until the addition was put on.

I grabbed my nail and hammer and went to work.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Thunk.

As I unknowingly tried to drive the nail into the brick beyond the plaster, the plaster cracked and dropped a large chunk onto my bedroom floor. I almost cried. My beautiful, freshly painted wall now had a chunk of plaster missing from it.

What did I do? Nothing. I’ll let Andy hang something over it with his trusty drill this weekend.