Greenwich 2065
Plastering Greenwich houses, where the board gets carried the last part of the way
A small peninsula of older houses on steep, narrow streets running down to Gore Cove and the river, where working out how material reaches the door comes before anything else.
Greenwich is not big and it has very little new housing. Most of what we are asked to look at went up between the 1900s and the 1940s and has been added to once or twice since: a verandah closed in, a bathroom moved, a rear room opened up, a lower level cut into the slope.
The plastering itself is ordinary. The delivery is not. Streets are narrow, driveways fall away hard, and a good number of houses sit below the road with steps down to the front door. Greenwich sits inside Lane Cove, and that page covers sloping blocks and raked ceilings across the whole municipality. This one stays on the houses here.
- Postcode 2065
- Federation and interwar housing
- Access checked first
The carry is part of the quote
Steps, a narrow street and a driveway that drops away get measured before a price, not on the first morning.
Older linings read first
Hard plaster on brick, lath in the oldest rooms and later sheet all get different work.
Sheet lengths chosen for the door
Where a full sheet cannot turn, the joint layout changes rather than the finish.
Lived in while we work
Rooms get closed off and handed back usable, because most of these houses have nowhere else to put the family.
Coverage
Greenwich at a glance
- Suburb
- Greenwich, NSW 2065
- Council area
- Lane Cove
- Housing we mostly see
- Federation and interwar houses, later additions, some small unit blocks
- Neighbouring areas we cover
- Northwood, Longueville, Riverview, Wollstonecraft, St Leonards
Before the first morning
Getting the material to the house, and what that changes
This is the part of a Greenwich quote that surprises people. Nothing about the plastering is unusual. Everything about getting nine or ten sheets of board to the room is.
The streets on the peninsula were set out long before anyone needed to get a truck down them. Park both sides and most are effectively one lane, and several finish in a turning circle or a dead end above the water. A long vehicle carrying full sheets cannot always get in, and where it can, it often cannot turn once it is there.
Then there is the house itself. A lot of them sit below the road, reached by a flight of steps or a driveway at a grade a loaded trolley will not hold. So the board gets carried, two people, a few sheets at a time, and that gets planned rather than discovered.
What it changes is sheet length, how many joints end up in the ceiling, how much cutting happens outside, where the waste stacks until it leaves, and how many trips the day takes. None of it changes the finish. All of it changes the day, which is why we ask about the street before we quote.
Room by room
What is usually behind the paint in a Greenwich house
Very few houses here are all one thing. Most are an original core with two or three later layers around it, and each layer wants a different repair.
| Part of the house | What it commonly is | What that means for the repair |
|---|---|---|
| Original front rooms | Hard plaster on brick walls, lath or early sheet above | Cut back to sound material, reinforce, and match the plane rather than the old texture |
| Hall and stair ceilings | Original ceiling, often with a run cornice and a rose | Worked around the detail, on staging rather than off a ladder |
| Enclosed verandah or sleepout | Light framing and thin sheet, sometimes with cover strips | Often better re-lined than patched, once we know what the sheet is |
| Lower level cut into the slope | Masonry with ground behind it | Find out whether the wall is dry before anything is fixed to it |
| Rear addition from the 1990s on | Modern plasterboard on timber or steel | Ordinary board repair, with the join to the old part the weak point |
| Bathroom or laundry that was moved | Mixed substrates, sometimes sheet never rated for the room | Wet area linings rather than a general patch |
A wall with ground behind it needs the cause found first
Where a lower level has been cut into the slope, the masonry on one side has soil and rock against it. If the paint on that wall keeps bubbling, or it feels cold and smells closed in after rain, the moisture is coming through the structure. Lining over it hides it for a season and then costs you the lining as well.
That one is for a builder or a waterproofing contractor to look at before we put anything back. Once the wall is genuinely dry and staying dry, it can be made good properly, and we will tell you which of those two situations you are in rather than quote around it.
Where to go next
The service pages that suit these houses
- Solid plastering for hard plaster on masonry walls in the original rooms, patched or re-floated
- Wall plastering and repairs for holes, knocks, old fixings and non-structural cracking
- Ceiling installation when a verandah room or an addition needs a new lining rather than another patch
- Sagging ceiling repairs for an older ceiling that has dropped away from the frame
- Skim coating to bring a wall or ceiling carrying decades of separate repairs back to one plane
- Cornice for fitting a new run, repairing a damaged one or matching an original profile
- Wet area linings for a bathroom or laundry going back in where the old one was
- Renovation plastering for multi-room work and the tie-in where an addition meets the original house
Other areas we cover close to Greenwich
Nearby
Asked on the peninsula
Greenwich questions
If yours is not here, ask it. We would rather answer it on the phone than have you guess.
If you use shorter sheets because of the access, do we end up with more cracks later?
No, and this is worth saying plainly. A joint is not a weakness. A recessed joint that has been taped, reinforced and built up in coats is as strong as the sheet either side of it, and on a ceiling it is often stronger than the board.
What causes joints to show later is rushing the build-up or setting over movement that has not been dealt with. Two extra joints in a hallway ceiling, done properly, will outlast one long sheet fitted badly because someone was determined to get it through the door.
The walls in the old part of our house are solid plaster, not sheet. Can they be patched?
Yes. Hard plaster applied straight onto brick is a different material from plasterboard and it is repaired differently: cut back to sound plaster, the edge keyed, then built out in coats to match the surrounding thickness. Filling it with a board compound over a crumbling edge is why so many of these patches fail.
The judgement call is how much of the wall has let go. Where the plaster is drummy over a large area, re-floating or lining the wall is usually better value than a run of patches. That work sits on the solid plastering page.
Our lower room is built into the slope and the paint keeps bubbling on one wall. Can it be replastered?
It can be made good, but not until the moisture behind it has been dealt with, and that is not a plastering job. Bubbling paint, salty white deposits or plaster that crumbles at the skirting line are all the wall telling you that water is moving through the masonry.
Have a builder or a waterproofing contractor look at it first. Once it is dry and staying dry, the wall can be cut back and rebuilt properly. We would rather say that at the quote than take the job twice.
We closed in the verandah years ago and the ceiling in there has gone wavy. Patch or re-line?
Usually re-line. Enclosed verandahs and sleepouts were often lined in thin sheet on light framing, sometimes with battens or cover strips over the joints, and after decades of heat and movement the sheet itself has had enough. Patching one section of a tired lining just moves the problem along.
Taking it out also lets us look at the framing and the insulation while it is open, which on that kind of room is usually where the real answer is. A new ceiling in the same space is covered on the ceiling installation page.
We are living in the house with one hallway and one bathroom. How do you stage that?
One room at a time, closed off, finished and handed back before the next one opens. Compound needs drying time between coats, so in an occupied house the sensible order is to get the messy work done in a room you can shut, then keep the later coats short.
The hallway is the part worth talking about at the quote, because everything travels through it. We protect the floor and the cornice line, keep the run clear at the end of each visit, and where there is only one bathroom we plan its lining last so it is out of service for as short a stretch as possible.
Greenwich
Tell us how a van would reach your door
A photo of the room, a note on the steps or the driveway, and whether the street is parked out. With that we can give you a range and a realistic number of visits.