Drywall would also give you a better chance of surviving a house fire that starts in the garage.

Am I crazy, or is the photo showing drywall attached to lathe and not plaster?

Try placing a bomb there, looks like a secret room is behind it.

Best way is to buy some piece of furniture, put it there and sell the house!

/s

You seem knowledgeable - I'm going to hijack and ask a question. I have a section of plaster that was adhered directly to brick. A less-than-knowledgeable about old houses contractor (and I won't hire again) cut a section out, about 8"x8" square. Now I need to fix it. I don't even know how I would go about putting drywall on that. Any suggestions?

He noticed the texture was a bit off so he tried to break through hoping to find a hidden level

Look at the bubbling on the wall, definetly a moisture problem.

Heck yeah! Vancouver carpenter for the win :D

If you can't get a decent answer, then:

• What happens if you have a vapor barrier and don't need it?
• What happens if you don't have a vapour barrier and do need it?

extend with a tube that fits over the shaft, with slots that fit over the pin

They also trip if you pull too many amps. Which can be caused by a short due to moisture, in whatever is plugged in or the socket.

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Thanks for the tips. I cut a bit of paint away, damp down the join. Not saturated thankfully.

Once it stops blowing a gale I’ll stick my head up into the roof and look for anything obvious.

Thanks u/--Ty-- and u/Guygan!

if you want to do it exactly the same way it was, you’ll need to find some calcium hydroxide power (called lime), empty it into a bucket and keep it in excess water for a week, then mix the resulting putty with sand 1:3 ratio, add in hair or synthetic fiber for reinforcement and apply it to the wall just like they did a hundred years ago. then spend the new few days spraying it to make sure it doesn’t crack as lime plaster tends to when it dries out. on the bright side if you do it right this mix will be quite resistant to damp

however if you are in america you will not be able to find a single contractor who knows how to do this for reasonable money, so a drywall patch is the practical choice. here in europe we also have very cheap gypsum plasters like knauf goldband which could go into this hole easily, but they aren’t as damp resistant as the old stuff, which is also more expensive here

OP could use glass mat drywall and avoid that issue

This same thing literally happened to me 12 hours ago. The previous owner had put new plaster up badly. A 5” hole quickly turned into 2ft hole.

I got a coupling nuts right here!

depending on the backer and the composition plaster can definitely lose structural integrity from damp. things like gypsum on brick can get absolutely shredded by salt migration from the brick. then instead of dealing with moldy drywall you have to deal with a wall section that has disintegrated into fine sand, ymmv what you prefer

even lime plaster on lathe can disintegrate if damp is trapped in the plaster behind an impermeable layer like thick paint or wallpaper

definitely source of water intrusion needs to be fixed before any repairs are done to the area. simply a waste of money and effort otherwise

But then you took an arrow to the knee?

they’re useful as a rough torque indicator. Do jack shit for preventing loosening.

They are mostly useful for assembly. you can put an impact on a bolt and nut in a thru hole and hit it without having to trap the nut with a wrench, because the lock washer will “bite”

It will not ever look right. Patch it for practice until you can fix it proper.

Just air seal your drywall really well.

Use a gasket before installing the drywall. Or just caulk the bottom.

And air seal outlet boxes really well.

Rotten plasterboard. Yeah, they will insist on replacing the whole panel of the same below building standard shit. If you want do it yourself, but better, pull the nails, get a panel of lets say made of 1×1s spaced by 1×2s creating a vertical grill that fits the space you need replaced (inside a 1×2 'picture-frame') and nail each together as you add them. Then you can file a pattern of groves and notches in the outfacing egdes of the 1×2s to make it look old and antique picture frame. I recall a diy guy who blow-torched his untreated timbers, and then nailed them together. I recall the doctor who tardis had a dark red-brown varnished wood room with routered edge circles for an antique style if thats your thing, but something that is ultimately nailed together as a timber panel that can be attatched to the wall behind it by screws is likely your thing.

Or something quick- a painted polycarbonate panel that fits the whole section attatched by hinges and a magnet pair on the inside.

Do you have ice dams?

I’ll note the small possibility the outlet is wired wrong down the line as well. All the GFCIs in my house were intertwined circuit wise and would trip when another device would run down the line. Had to run an extra neutral line in one case. The random timing leads me to believe it could take OP that time to run something else on the circuit. Hoped it’s the lights. But you never know.