I live in and am renovating a 135 year old house in New Orleans. In many of the rooms, someone has installed drywall over the plaster. The downside of this is that now the wall surface extends beyond the baseboard trim. The window and door trim is wide enough that the extra layer of drywall is not noticeable. Some of the rooms have an extra piece of baseboard trim over top the drywall and original baseboard.
My question is, has anyone ever attempted removing the drywall in a situation like this and restoring the plaster, and how big of a job was it? I’m aware that what might be underneath the drywall is a big mystery. It could very well be full of holes from running electrical cable and be beyond saving.
Thanks.
Replies
George,
I have never seen good plaster under a skin of drywall. Usually it was put there to cover a surface in poor condition. On the occasion where I've had to remove a portion of the skin, most everything under it but the lath has come down with it. Often the drywall is glued in addition to being screwed/nailed. If you lose all the board and the plaster, thickness might allow you to hang new board over that lath and pretty much even up the new surface where it should be with the trim.
But never having found good plaster doesn't mean it doesn't exist. You might get lucky.
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Remodeling Contractor just outside the Glass City.
http://www.quittintime.com/
What he said
Nope , and I aint gonna . You would have a horriffic mess. Wouldnt be any fun. [I like to have fun] And you would still have a mess after the drywall was cleaned up. Yuck.
I would much rather have fun removing those base boards and making me some pretty trim. A little fill in behind it . At this pont the drywall if your best friend . Might go over the drywall with drywall, but oh no, not take it down to get plaster. IMO.
Tim Mooney
There are two reasonable options:
1. Patch up the existing drywall and re-work the trim, then paint
2. Demo it all back to the studs. The amount of work involved is less than twice that of demoing all the plaster out of an ordinary room. Scraping stuff down is about the same, but there's twice as much crap to shovel up and haul out. I have this situation on some of my upstairs ceilings, which isn't so great for the joists.
The only reason anybody puts drywall or paneling over plaster is because the plaster has had it.
-- J.S.