Old house repairs in St. Joseph

St. Joseph has one of the better collections of nineteenth-century housing in Missouri — Robidoux Hill, Museum Hill, and street after street of homes built when this was one of the wealthiest towns on the river. They are worth keeping. They also break in ways a 1998 house does not.

Plaster over lath

Original plaster is three coats over wood lath, and when it fails it usually is not the plaster — it is the keys. The wet plaster was pushed through gaps in the lath to form keys that lock it in place. When those break, a whole section goes loose while looking perfectly fine.

How to check: press gently. If the wall gives and springs back, the keys are gone in that area. Skim-coating over it is money wasted; it will crack again by spring.

The right repair depends on how much has let go. Small areas can be re-anchored with plaster washers and screws before patching. Large areas are usually better taken back and replaced. Anyone who quotes a skim coat without pressing on the wall has not looked at it.

Wood sash windows

The single most common request in an old house here is "the window will not stay up." That is almost always a broken sash cord, not a broken window — a weight sitting at the bottom of the pocket with the rope snapped off it.

It is a genuinely repairable failure. The weight is still in there, the pocket is still accessible, and a sash cord is a few dollars. Replacing an original double-hung with a vinyl unit because the cord broke is one of the most expensive mistakes people make in these houses.

Other sash work worth knowing: failed glazing putty is why old windows leak air, and reglazing costs a fraction of replacement. Painted-shut sash can usually be freed without damage if you are patient about it.

Doors that stick, and what they are telling you

A door that binds seasonally is normal — wood moves with humidity. A door that has developed a permanent diagonal gap is telling you the opening has racked, which is a settling story, not a door story.

Planing the door to fit a racked opening is the fast fix and the wrong one, because it stops working when the house moves again. Worth understanding which one you have before anyone takes a plane to a hundred-year-old door.

Lead, and why it changes the work

Anything built before 1978 may have lead paint, and in St. Joseph the relevant date is usually more like before 1940. The EPA's Renovation, Repair and Painting rule requires certified firms and contained work practices for work that disturbs painted surfaces in pre-1978 housing.

For handyman work that means sanding, scraping and demolition are not casual activities in these houses, particularly around windows where friction surfaces generate dust. It is a real constraint on how the work gets done, and it is worth asking about.

What is worth fixing, and what is not

We are not going to tell you everything original is sacred. Some things should be replaced. But the default in these houses runs the wrong way — people replace repairable original elements because replacement is easier to quote, and the house loses the thing that made it worth buying.

Usually worth repairing: wood sash, original doors and hardware, plaster in sound areas, original trim.

Often worth replacing: failed additions and porches done badly in the seventies, galvanized supply lines, anything already replaced once with something that did not last.