Q: Our plumber has had to cut two holes in our dining room ceiling and remove a section of original cast-plaster crown molding to assess, access and repair the second-floor bathroom plumbing above.

Editor’s note: Welcome to the 17th installment of Brownstone Boys Reno, a reader renovation diary about renovating a brownstone in Bed Stuy. See the first one here. They also blog at ...

Sometimes, on a nice afternoon, Jeff Poree drives by the Peristyle in City Park, where he and his workers spent three months in 2012, resurfacing every bit of the century-old ceiling and ionic columns ...

A Jeannette tradesman is bringing a 130-year-old Greensburg building up to speed on its past. When Doug Davis is done with his dusty work, the Ameriprise Financial Services building on West Otterman ...

A regular reader sent in these photos of his recent efforts to repair the plaster crown moldings in his Clinton Hill brownstone. Turns out that back around 1910 someone added a screen to the parlor ...

To make crown molding correctly, plasterers must constantly run a blade across the top of the plaster as it dries. “Turn away for even two puffs on a cig and you’d have to throw the whole thing out — ...