# Plaster ceiling repair



## ochocinco (Aug 8, 2008)

I'm brand new to these forums, but it looks like a great community.  Hopefully somebody can help me with my problem:

I live in an aging fraternity house, and one of our second floor bathroom ceilings has been severely damaged by water leaks (the plumbing's been fixed, but the ceiling hasn't).  This bathroom is directly below a third floor bathroom, where the water was leaking from.

The ceiling was bulging severely and chunks of plaster were starting to fall.  We've ripped out some of the damage plaster, as it was basically falling down.  The plaster work in our house was done with steel mesh laths, and thin steel studs in the walls.  The laths above this ceiling have severely rusted and corroded, and basically came down with the plaster.

Right now, the hole is probably about 1' by 1', but I would guess we'll have to replace a minimum of 3' by 2'.  Clearly, we will need to install drywall.  The problem is going to be mounting the drywall.  There are no studs to screw it into.  There are ceramic tiled walls going up to the ceiling surrounding the toilet stalls, and on top of them a ledge of sorts.  Theoretically 2x4s could be laid down on those and the drywall mounted to those 2x4s.  Unfortunately, there is piping in the way of this (we have radiant heat, so there are a lot of small pipes running around in the floors, plus this is between two bathrooms...).

I don't have any good ideas on how we might accomplish this project.  Please help if you can.

I can provide more information or probably take some pictures if needed.

Thanks much in advance.


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