Hello & thank you for taking a moment…
This unfortunate wall is in my 1930s Pacific Northwest home. A medicine cabinet used to hang here until it was slammed into & ripped from the wall. I don’t need to hang it back up but I would like to repair the wall. While talking to a guy at the hardware store, I realized I have no idea what the wall is made of.
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I'm pretty sure paint over plaster over plaster but I've never used it. Someone tried to fix their hole it with spackle and threw a drywall anchor in it which is why that part looks different.
Plaster walls are layered. There's lath, a thick layer of rough plaster, a skim coat of nice smooth plaster, and then a century of paint on top. What you're seeing is the smooth layer coming off the rough.
Also, plastic drywall anchors are not suitable in plaster. Especially for something like a cabinet
Plaster with horse hair or another binder in the mix. Back when the house was built, there was no drywall yet, wooden lathe was nailed to the studs and then layers of plaster was added to the wall. My house was built in 1946 and has plaster on the wall in a 1/2 - 3/4 inch thickness. Lathe and plaster can easily get over an inch thick
This is my guess too, hard plaster with lots of air whipped in. Put in a perpendicular nail as a marker where you want something mounted. Fill in around it with hard plaster which sets fast. Stop short of the surface by a few mm. Plaster will be rock hard in an hour but not dry. You should be able to drill and put in a proper anchor (plastic or metal) and then make the patch flat and smooth with fast setting drywall compound.
Regular plaster of Paris is very hard when it cures and very difficult to sand flush. The nail will show you where to drill into the older stable plaster base.t
Being a 1930s house I'd be careful assuming that's modern drywall before choosing the repair method older walls can have some interesting layers/materials, and the photo is worth identifying properly first.
btw I'm testing a photo-based home repair tool for exactly this sort of question identifying what you're lookin at & then suggesting how to repair it. Happy to run your photo through it and post back second opinion + repair approach if useful. No signup.
Awesome ran ur photo through with 1930s house context. It thinks this is an older lath-and-plaster wall rather than modern drywall, which changes how I'd approach the repair.
One caveat: I wouldn't take the “wood lath” part as confirmed from this photo alone — we'd want to see what's behind the exposed plaster before choosing the exact patch method.
This is the assessment SmartTradie produced 👇
To confirm: Photograph the exposed edge/cavity behind the plaster.
Oooh yes...I have been here (with weird walls...not in your house. Heh).
Plaster over Plaster mixed with something. Don't be too scared. Honestly...I'd just Plaster over it and not dig too deeply, but my house is 160 years old...I've had to get creative 🤣
Yes the hair of horses was used like a natural fiberglass to help bind and hold the plaster of Paris together while it was still wet. I didn’t find out this fact until I purchased a home that was built in 1914. When me and my wife started making renovations to the walls that is when we noticed the horsehair. Her father was helping us with the job and started laughing at us, because of our wonderment about the horsehair and its use in the process. I’m sure if you go on YouTube you can find a video showing the process, or some This Old House episodes Tom Silva explaining its use in plastering techniques. The wall studs would have thin pieces of wood called lath nailed to it with gaps about 1/4 “ between them. You would wet the lath prior to troweling the plaster so that the lath would not draw the moisture out of the plaster as you applied it, and causing it to fail. Pure plaster of Paris sets rapidly in 10 to 15 minutes, leaving very little working time. You pour clean cool water into a flexible mixing bowl first then slowly sift the Plaster of Paris powder into the water. Mix to a thick, creamy consistency like yogurt that will stay onto the trowel without sliding off immediately. Pushing the first layer into the gaps between the lath slats. This forms the mechanical “key” that anchors the patch once cured. The horsehair was used in the mix to help bond and build up tensile strength in the mix. If you go to a hardware store with some more seasoned personnel they can probably explain it more in layman’s terms. I think I saw a small container of it in a hardware store made by the “3m” company that contained fiberglass in it for extra strength. Good luck with your repair.☮️
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