Lath and Plaster, a beautiful mess

I live in a house built in 1897, it is not a fancy or grand house, just a place that people have lived for over a hundred years. Much of the older more charming elements were “renovated” out of this house in the 1960s by a previous homeowner.  Over the years we have tried to remove the 1960’s elements and replace them with items that are more in keeping with an old house. Another way of saying this is that our renovations consist of getting rid of lots of junky material from the 60s and trying to make the house “look and feel” as old as it is.

Current work in the house involves scrapping away all the 1960s stuff and taking out a wall so that we can open up a small, poorly lit kitchen. In doing this work we uncovered the original wallpaper and lathe and plaster. A little background: lath and plaster was the wall finish of choice until the 1950’s when it was replaced with drywall (aka gypsum board, aka sheet rock). Installing lath and plaster involved attaching the wood strips called “lath” to wall studs (lath was often 3/8” thick, about 1½” wide and 48” long, with a 3/8” gap between them –sorry to use non-metric measurements for those of you outside of the US). A layer of coarse plaster was troweled onto the lath forming the base of the wall finish and this was then finished with finer plaster.

My long explanation of that plastering process was included so that I could share my amazement at the fact that when we removed the ugly fake paneling from the walls we found perfectly straight, intact plaster walls.  Such a precise job had been done originally that after 116 years the plaster was smooth, straight and rather lovely.  Not to mention the perfectly preserved, albeit faded wallpaper. Part of me wants to keep the lath, wallpaper and plaster exposed –as though we were in a hipster brewpub. I keep staring at the exposed elements because I find the whole thing sort of beautiful.  Acknowledging a job well done by the long gone craftsman that did the work so long ago and the slower more painstaking approach to construction is important to me. Plus I really do like the way this looks.