Let?s get plastered! Welcome back to Period Dramas, a weekly column that alternates between rounding up historic homes on the market and answering questions we?ve always had about older structures.
Last summer, we took a day trip to check out an early 19th-century Federal house that was on the market about an hour and a half north of New York City.
The house had essentially sat vacant for a few decades and was previously inhabited by somebody who did very little work on the house. In short: Very little had changed since it was completed in about 1830. It needed an alarming amount of work.
We immediately noticed the house?s plaster walls and molding. We began to think about the wide spectrum of places we?ve seen plaster detailing?from social clubs? stately drawing rooms to picture molding in our own (modest) apartments. And now here we were, about a hundred miles north of New York City, confronting a similar type of construction. If we were to take on the restoration, what does rehabilitating?or replacing?plaster take"

The house?s master bedroom. Notice the section of molding that?s missing above the fireplace.

?In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the plaster industry was thriving,? says Foster Reeve, founder of Foster Reeve & Associates, an architectural and ornamental plaster company. ?That was how you built. You didn?t have the dimensional lumber that you have today. There was essentially just lathe and plaster.?
?Today, you often ...