A crack in the wall

About two weeks after we moved into our house, we woke up one Saturday morning to a small crack in the wall in the living room.  German houses are not constructed out of wooden studs and drywall.  Instead, the walls have a concrete base and then a plaster coating is applied on top of the concrete.  In our situation, the plaster coating had become separated from the concrete base.  Initially, the crack was only a few inches long but when I pressed on that part of the wall, I could feel the wall bulging away from the base.  So we called the landlord.  He came over and agreed it needed to be repaired.  So the next day a plaster guy came by the house.  At first he started picking at the wall with a small putty knife.  Then he got a hammer and an even larger putty knife.  Eventually he was removing large sections of the wall at a time.

By the time he was finished removing parts of the wall that had become separated from the base, the crack had grown to become a rather large hole.

Next up was patching the hole with plaster. The plaster comes in bags of powder and has to be mixed with water to the proper consistency.  Then it is applied with a trowel.

Once it has been applied, the plaster is smoothed with a straightedge.

Next the rest of the wall got a topcoat of plaster so that everything would look the same after it dried.

All done with the topcoat.

We had to wait for it to dry.  Here it is about an hour later -- the topcoat is starting to dry but the plaster is still wet.

It took about three days to dry completely.  Each day the plaster guy came back to see if it was dry.  When it was finally dry, then the landlord came over and painted it white.  The whole process took about a week.