Drywall and ceiling repair in Menlo Park

Plaster repair in Allied Arts bungalows and beyond

Allied Arts/Stanford Park, between Middle Avenue and San Francisquito Creek, is known for 1925 bungalows on streets named after colleges, like Cornell Road and Harvard Avenue. Houses from the 1920s were typically plastered over wood lath, and that plaster cracks along the lath lines and at door corners as the house moves. Patching it well takes different materials than drywall, and a lighter hand.

Hairline cracks in sound plaster can be filled where they are, while loose or bulging sections come out and get rebuilt, then the surface is matched before primer. In the 1950s and 1960s houses elsewhere in town, the wall is usually drywall, and nail pops and seam cracks are the typical repairs. Send a photo with a coin or tape measure in the frame so we can judge the size.

Worth knowing about Menlo Park

• Menlo Park has 13,388 housing units; 70.3% predate 1980, 7.1% were built in 1939 or earlier, and the 1950s produced the most of any decade, 23.2%.
• Felton Gables is an enclave of 127 small ranch-style houses built in the 1930s and 1940s on the former estate of Senator Charles Norton Felton.
• Allied Arts/Stanford Park sits beside the Allied Arts Guild, a Spanish Colonial-style complex from 1929, and has no sidewalks; it is known for 1925 bungalows.