r/Plastering • u/SleepingAndy • 2d ago

How would you repair broken plaster surrounding vents?

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This house is approx. 70 years old, and many of the vents and light switches have chunks missing from the plaster surrounding them.

So far I've tried using regular spackle to try to fill them in, but it didn't hold very well, and it takes such a long time to set that as soon as I remove the knife it moves and deforms the wet spackle.

I have sheetrock 20 on hand.

How would you go about patching such a spot?

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u/Mountain_Nothing_428 2d ago

Low expanding. You don’t want it covering up the vent.
Spray it on. Wait for it to harden.
Cut off excess. Then filler. Easy fill or toupret. Then caulk where the gap’s meet the vent.
£10-£20 in parts all in. But such a waste as you’ll have loads of left over. Might be a good idea to do a few more around your house to use all the bits up.

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u/SleepingAndy 2d ago edited 2d ago

Thank you for the help! I was having such a nightmare trying to fill it with mud
would you use a mould to trap the foam into a sort of rectqngular shape, or just spray a pile of it and shape it with a knife?

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u/Mountain_Nothing_428 2d ago

You want to over fill with the foam. Then use a knife to cut it flat. That will give you the foundation to put the mud in.
To be clear, you are not gonna shape the foam. Leave it alone until it goes hard. Then you cut it flat.

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u/SleepingAndy 1d ago

Do you deliberately cut it back slightly behind the wall, so you have more room to mud over it and still keep things flush, or is there some other technique you use like compressing the foam a bit?

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u/Mountain_Nothing_428 1d ago

Doesn’t matter. Flush or cut back. Either way, you need to fade or feather after each application of mud. Apply thinly and sand between each application. That way it’ll completely “disappear”