Plaster Repair in Toronto & the GTA

If your house went up before the 1960s — and huge swaths of Toronto did, from Riverdale semis to Etobicoke bungalows — your walls are probably lath and plaster, not drywall. Plaster is a different animal: it cracks in spiderweb patterns, it comes loose from the wooden lath behind it, and chunks can drop from ceilings when the keys holding it break. Patching it like drywall, with a smear of filler, is why so many old-house repairs fail within a year.

Proper plaster patching starts with finding out what's actually loose. We press around the damage; hollow-sounding areas mean the plaster has separated from the lath and needs to be reattached with plaster washers or adhesive, or cut back to sound material. Cracks get raked out, bridged with fibreglass mesh, and filled with a setting compound that bonds to old plaster — not lightweight spackle, which shrinks and lets go. Bigger losses get a drywall inlay or a base-coat-and-finish rebuild, then the whole repair is feathered so it sits flush with walls that are rarely flat to begin with.

For a plaster crack repair quote, photograph the damage from straight on and at an angle so we can see whether the surface is bulging, and tell us the approximate age of the house. If plaster is actively falling or a ceiling is sagging, mention that — loose overhead plaster is a safety issue and we prioritize it.

• Plaster crack repair with mesh reinforcement and setting compounds
• Reattachment of loose plaster to lath using plaster washers or adhesive
• Lath and plaster repair where sections have broken away
• Drywall inlay patches blended flush into surrounding plaster
• Plaster ceiling repair, including sagging and dropped sections
• Skim coating rough or previously patched plaster walls
• Corner and edge rebuilding on chipped archways and returns
• Repair around removed fixtures, old vents and abandoned openings
• Priming with the right sealer so patches don't flash through paint

• How much plaster is loose — a tight crack is quick, but a wall that sounds hollow across a wide area needs reattachment or removal, which changes the scope
• Wall flatness — old plaster walls wave and bow, so patches have to be blended into imperfect surfaces rather than sanded dead flat
• Ceilings versus walls — overhead plaster work is slower and needs more protection below, and sagging ceiling plaster has to be secured before finishing
• Layers of paint and wallpaper — a century of coatings can fail along with the plaster and needs cutting back to a sound edge
• Matching the finish — some old walls have a sand-float or textured finish coat that has to be recreated to hide the repair
• The cause of the damage — cracks from a leak, a sagging beam or foundation movement will return unless the cause is addressed first, and we'll say so

Every home is different, so we don’t publish flat prices — the quote is free and based on your actual job.