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The wonder of modern drywall

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Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#71

Post by rootusrootus »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #61
asdff wrote: post #33

> It’s impossible to mount even lightweight items such as picture frames onto the wall, because even the tiniest hole from nails or the like would crumble and erode into dust. The trick for this is to just find the stud. Same thing you'd have to do in drywall. For light stuff like photos, you can get away with putting a nail right into the lathe without having to find a stud. If you miss the lathe (you can tell) just…

You really need to predrill through the lath. Old lath is much harder than freshly milled wood. If you hit anywhere off the stud it can cause the lath to flex and break the backside keying off. This leads to delamination with enough accumulated damage.

> Old lath is much harder than freshly milled wood

That is my piece of advice for anybody who is buying a house at least a hundred years old. Old lath is like iron, and you can do more damage than you expect if you just try to put a screw into it without pre-drilling.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#72

Post by nkurz »

rootusrootus wrote: post #66
globular-toast wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is indeed how it's done in the UK. It's a bit of a cliché for British people to complain about American houses, but it's not that we don't have stud walls ourselves, it's just that we don't just go and paint directly on top of plasterboard. Both walls and ceilings are skimmed, with either plaster or shudder Artex. We also have dot and dab walls which are built from block, have a layer of plasterboard glued, leavin…

Probably 99% of all drywall in the US is not painted directly, either. It is textured [0]. I'll go out on a limb and say that a substantial majority these days are orange peel texture on the walls and knockdown on the ceiling, made primarily with drywall mud (Artex seems to be essentially the same thing). I'm not sure I would want a plaster skim in any case. I grew up in a house built in 1914 that had lath & plaster,…

> Probably 99% of all drywall in the US is not painted directly, either.

I'm not sure about the exact numbers, but I'm pretty certain this is a vast overestimate.

I've painted a more than average number of interior walls in the US (both personally and professionally) and except for a few that were wood, adobe, or lath and plaster, all the rest involved painting directly on drywall. Sometimes the base paint was applied with a thick nap roller to achieve a degree of texture, but I never textured one with something else before painting.

All I can guess is that there are large regional or cultual differences here, and each of us is having a very localized experience.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#73

Post by rootusrootus »

badc0ffee wrote: post #42
epcoa wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rarely do pipes, wires, or ducts just outright fail even in 50 years. Usual case for tearing out drywall is for voluntary renovations. Shit behind the wall just doesn't "fail" if it is left undisturbed or you were unlucky like those that got defective PEX or similar installed.

Maybe you're thinking of poly-B, not PEX.

About 15 years ago I installed a new kitchen faucet for my grandmother, whose kitchen had been renovated in the early/mid 90s. Right near the end of the time when PB was inexplicably popular. I have to say, I spent several hours cursing whoever decided to use PB, and in this particular case whoever decided that the pipes should connect directly to the faucet rather than terminate at a bog standard quarter turn valve. Lots and lots of cursing.

As I recall, wasn't PB basically a single vendor, too? Finding PB-to-anything-else adapters at Home Depot was like going on a treasure hunt. Sizing is different, so you really need something actually built for PB. And probably end up with sharkbites. If I were shopping for a house right now and found it had been plumbed with PB, I'd just turn around and walk away.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#74

Post by mrexroad »

ZPrimed wrote: post #45
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #12

Interesting to me that no mention of the use of drywall (in various forms) to act as a substrate for actual plaster. This seems common in the UK from what I understand from my family back there, and it is also common in the USA in high end residential construction. It is particular common in Santa Fe where I live now (for high end anyway) because the so-called "diamond plaster" look & feel is very popular. So, you st…

yeah, my parents' US home (which was originally my grandmother's) in the eastern half of the US has plaster-on-drywall construction. it is a bitch and a half for hanging anything (just like plaster on lath), plus it screws up wifi. Pro tip for finding a stud, if you have access to the bare floor -- stick a drywalling knife / spatula under the bottom trim and poke. you can find the studs that way, and then measure off…

re: finding studs. unless it's balloon framing, you'll hit the bottom plate in normal stick home construction (and if not, you probably should air seal that gap...). The most consistent and easiest way to find studs is hovering a neodymium magnet across the wall to find the drywall screws. I haven't used my stud finder in years b/c of how much more reliable this is. Plus, it works even if you've doubled up your drywall (e.g. 2x 5/8in w/ green glue for sound abatement, etc).

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#75

Post by rootusrootus »

fractallyte wrote: post #27

There are reasons not to like gypsum drywall: > Some buildings standing today still have wattle-and-daub panels from 700 years ago. Will any drywalled building survive even a tenth of this time? > The plaster mixture used then was a homegrown concoction, with recipes matching the climate needs and vernacular material availability. The wonder of wattle-and-daub (clay) and plaster-and-lath (lime) is that the materials…

> I don't know of any old house that suffers from black mold...

For much the same reason they don't suffer from low heating bills, either.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#76

Post by nostrademons »

enobrev wrote: post #16
mlyle wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the alternative, though? Removable panels will be more expensive, and troublesome in various ways. Drywall is not too bad to deal with. And 99% of the wall surface doesn't need to be opened for a -long- time.

I watched a video recently, which I can't find, where an architect set up a beautiful wooden baseboard around the entirety of their property, and that baseboard held all mechanicals and was perfectly clean and easy to get into as needed. Drywall is manageable and cheap, I agree. But it's more painful than it should be for something that _will_ require maintenance.

I've seen videos where people will put in removable drywall panels that can just be lifted out for access.

There are a lot of downsides though. You lose airsealing, if you don't have an airtight building envelope on the outside of the drywall. You lose fire resistance. You often lose aesthetics, although I've seen this done extremely tastefully. You lose childproofing, and run the risk of a kid electrocuting themselves or destroying your plumbing or dropping stuff in the wall. You impose constraints on what can go on the walls and where your furniture can go.

Given that drywall is pretty easy to cut and replace, most people figure it's just not worth the costs for something you do infrequently.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#77

Post by mrexroad »

mcbishop wrote: post #10

I really like this guy's drywall-install how-to videos: https://www.youtube.com/@vancouvercarpenter

pretty sure it's an established rule now that drywall cannot be discussed w/o linking to vancouver carpenter.

but, yeah, his videos are great. i've done more than my share of everything from sound abatement channels/glues/etc, hanging rock on vaulted ceilings, to level 5 finishes, but I still like to flip though his videos every now and then and pick up logistical / speed tips.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#79

Post by AngryData »

epcoa wrote: post #39
enobrev wrote: post #3

I will never understand why we fill our walls with mechanical and electrical infrastructure and then wrap them in a paper and plaster, which then needs to be torn, broken, and repaired in order to maintain said infrastructure. Pipes will fail. Wires will fail. Ducts will fail. Maybe not in 5 years, but over the span of 20, they will. Why make them so frustratingly inaccessible?

Rarely do pipes, wires, or ducts just outright fail even in 50 years. Usual case for tearing out drywall is for voluntary renovations. Shit behind the wall just doesn't "fail" if it is left undisturbed or you were unlucky like those that got defective PEX or similar installed.

Wires not really but copper and iron pipes and ducts can and do corrode away. Ive seen hvac ducts that were more hole than anything but nobody noticed under the floor or above the ceiling.

Re: The wonder of modern drywall

#80

Post by asdff »

franktankbank wrote: post #55
asdff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can hang things through it just as easy as drywall too. Light stuff just put it right into the lathe. Heavy stuff, with both types of walls you are going to want to anchor into a stud.

How do you find yourself a lath? Try once if it doesn't hit then move up/down a 3/4 inch.

Pretty much but the wall is mostly lathe so you usually hit first go.
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