Q:We are getting ready to repaint our home office. The walls and ceiling were cracked during the 1989 quake and poorly patched before we moved in. We had the roof redone this summer, and the banging ...

Q. We're buying a house that is probably close to 100 years old. It has been vacant for the past several years and needs a good amount of cleaning up and fixing up. One thing we're concerned about is ...

Locate joists with an electronic stud finder, or just probe for joists by driving a nail through the drywall. All the joists ...

Dear James: I have an old house with plaster walls and many cracks that need to be repaired. How can I fix these so they stay fixed and are invisible? — Julianne T. Dear Julianne: Many older houses ...

Hanging anything onto a plaster wall is a bit of a challenge. Depth finders help locate studs behind the plaster, but drilling through plaster and lathe into a stud is often problematic. There are a ...

Q:I live in a home built in 1979 and want to create a smoother surface on my walls. They were finished with a textured finish of long strokes of finishing mud, which I have heard called a skip-trough ...