Ceiling Repairs in Mount Lawley

The streets off Beaufort Street and either side of Walcott Street were built out between the 1900s and the 1930s, and the housing is remarkably intact: Federation Queen Anne villas with their bay windows and turrets, Edwardian and inter-war bungalows, and the Californian bungalows that came later with their low-pitched roofs and deep verandahs. Ceilings in these homes are typically fibrous plaster at around three metres, with run cornice, decorative friezes in the formal rooms and a rose in most ceilings.

A century of Perth summers and winters has moved the roof timbers above those ceilings, and the plaster has moved with them. Cracks tend to follow the original sheet joins and radiate out from the ceiling rose. Sagging usually shows up first in the larger front rooms where the span is longest, and cornice separation is common above doorways and in corners.

Mount Lawley homes have also been heavily renovated, with rear extensions opening onto gardens, upstairs additions tucked into the roof space, and ducted air conditioning run through ceilings that were never designed for it. Where new plasterboard meets old fibrous plaster, or where an original ceiling has been cut for a new stair, is where the trouble concentrates.