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Please forgive my unfamiliarity with the term I used - the stuff used in my walls is made from "sheets", but seemed to be harder than modern drywall when drilling for light fixtures, etc., maybe it was just the plaster coating that made the difference to me. I just went into the bathroom and opened the access panel to the bathtub fill, and there is indeed a paper-covered "drywall" attached to the studs, over which is a thick layer of troweled cement upon which the plastic tile was glued, so it appears you are correct. The next time I have occasion to stick my head into the attic, I plan to move away some of the blown insulation and confirm what it is (if it has writing on it). You cleared away a misconception for me, thank you.
You have a typical rock lath plaster installation. When you drill into the finished surface you are literally drilling into a thin layering of two coats of what is essentially concrete, so it's a lot different than drilling into or mounting anything to drywall. As for the brand name of the rock lath, it doesn't matter. Mine is made by "U.S Gypsum" and I'm sure they had many competitors back in the day. My walls average out at 5/8 to 3/4" thick with the first layer consisting of 3/8" rock lath, then a base coat of 5/16th to 3/8th of gray cement plaster, finished with a very thin layer of top coat cement plaster. The final coat was tinted to a "salmon" color in a sand finish. The result was a slightly rough textured finish that was tinted to an acceptable color that did not need to be painted.
Curly asks:
"Please forgive my unfamiliarity with the term I used - the stuff used in my walls is made from "sheets", but seemed to be harder than modern drywall when drilling for light fixtures, etc."
You are describing a surface popular in the 40s and 50s called "rock lathe". It came in sheets about 20 by 30 inches. It was very hard; far harder than sheet rock or dry wall; same stuff. Rock lathe was very popular in New England. My parents' home had it. I watched it applied the walls in our home in 1951. It went up fast. I handed it to the men on ladders, one at a time.
Curly asks:
"Please forgive my unfamiliarity with the term I used - the stuff used in my walls is made from "sheets", but seemed to be harder than modern drywall when drilling for light fixtures, etc."
You are describing a surface popular in the 40s and 50s called "rock lathe". It came in sheets about 20 by 30 inches. It was very hard; far harder than sheet rock or dry wall; same stuff. Rock lathe was very popular in New England. My parents' home had it. I watched it applied the walls in our home in 1951. It went up fast. I handed it to the men on ladders, one at a time.
Rock lath was a replacement for using wood as laths . It was also called "button board" due to the holes which acted as the spaces found between wood laths. First (brown coat) of plaster oozed through those small holes acting as a replacement for plaster scratch coat.
Please forgive my unfamiliarity with the term I used - the stuff used in my walls is made from "sheets", but seemed to be harder than modern drywall when drilling for light fixtures, etc., maybe it was just the plaster coating that made the difference to me. I just went into the bathroom and opened the access panel to the bathtub fill, and there is indeed a paper-covered "drywall" attached to the studs, over which is a thick layer of troweled cement upon which the plastic tile was glued, so it appears you are correct. The next time I have occasion to stick my head into the attic, I plan to move away some of the blown insulation and confirm what it is (if it has writing on it). You cleared away a misconception for me, thank you.
No worries, it's all good!
Just am a firm believer in knowledge equals power.
My old man was big on knowing every GD thing about whatever he purchased (from cars right on down to houses) so people couldn't later p$$ on his leg and tell him it was raining.
Far too many contractors of all sorts either don't know what they're facing, or do and don't want bother and expense of doing a job right. So they BS the homeowner into doing something that they shouldn't or maybe don't have to do.
Again takeaway points to remember is that plaster in various forms gave way to drywall largely starting in 1950's.
Between WWII and Korean war vets needing housing, and general push towards moving to the suburbs (along with other reasons) there was a boom in new development pushed by getting things built quickly (and often) cheaply as possible. That trend has continued and still holds largely true today.
Many homes built prior to say 1940 or so were built to last, especially if target demographic was a certain income level. Today homes are built often of far less quality and it doesn't matter because expectation is they won't be up for very long before being bulldozed, and land redeveloped.
We were discussing this in another thread; for the money developers are asking for new construction they ought to be ashamed of themselves. Very little quality about in terms of workmanship and design. Just street after street of cookie cutter homes with Lowes/Home Depot type finishing/furnishings.
Within a year or so after purchase/moving in defects become apparent. That and where a house once lasted a decade or so before showing signs of wear, now starts to look busted with just a few years of living by a small family.
My 1959-built home has all plaster walls, but they are not plaster and lath. Instead they are either plaster on plasterboard, which is a structural component, or plaster on brick. I do have one room, the first floor bathroom, where the walls are simply plaster alone, with no substrate, at least on two walls. I will say that this is the quietest home I have ever had, and it also holds temperatures well, both heat and cold.
BTW, my last home, built in 1927, still had all its original interior walls of Homasote, which was the precursor to drywall. Homasote was used during WWI to build medical facilities in France due to its sound-deadening qualities, plus it was very effective at wicking up moisture. It had a unique surface texture as well. I'm grateful that house didn't have plaster walls as the shock waves from weapons testing at the adjacent Naval base would have caused constant cracking of all the surfaces - the Homasote was practically crack-free.
My house (built in 1958) was constructed much as yours, i.e., not plaster and lathe, but plaster on plasterboard except for the areas surrounding the original glass block windows which are plaster on brick with marble sills at the base of each window. Like your home, it's quiet and retains temperatures well. (It also helps that the house is well-insulated for a house of its era.) All of the vertical plasterwork in the main living areas, stairwell, upstairs hall, and powder room (and including the coved ceiling in the living room) have a swirled pattern to them, which is rather lovely.
I'm not sure how the coved ceilings, archways, and curved wall leading up to the staircase were created, though, given that all of the ceilings and straight portions of the walls are definitely plaster on plasterboard.
My mother said that my grandfather insisted on plaster walls and ceilings when he had their house "roughed in" in 1954 as he didn't care for drywall. (He did all of the finishing work himself.) That house was just as quiet, snug in the winter and cool in the summer as mine.
My brother's 1955 house's walls and ceilings and walls are also plaster, which leads me to believe that perhaps the heavy use of drywall in that particular period of the post-war era was less common in certain parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania and/or because the local trades folks still dealt mostly with what they were most familiar at the time.
What I do know is all three houses, while small (1,365, 1,100, and 1,500 square feet respectively) were built solidly and for the long haul and were all what we would now term "custom-built" rather than part of large suburban tract housing plans.
Last edited by Formerly Known As Twenty; 10-19-2019 at 06:28 PM..
Our house, built in 1911, is a double brick house with plaster walls. Even the hallway ceiling was plaster, until it fell off a couple years ago. Inch thick plaster that fell about 30 seconds after my wife walked through there. Replaced it with plywood. Takes a lot of work to hang anything on the wall. We just use the hangers that were already up when we moved in (this was my parents' house). Watched my dad drill holes to put lag bolts in to hang things.
Curly asks:
"Please forgive my unfamiliarity with the term I used - the stuff used in my walls is made from "sheets", but seemed to be harder than modern drywall when drilling for light fixtures, etc."
You are describing a surface popular in the 40s and 50s called "rock lathe". It came in sheets about 20 by 30 inches. It was very hard; far harder than sheet rock or dry wall; same stuff. Rock lathe was very popular in New England. My parents' home had it. I watched it applied the walls in our home in 1951. It went up fast. I handed it to the men on ladders, one at a time.
Not all plasterboard or rock lath is the same size. I know the plasterboard for my exterior walls is in horizontal 4 ft. by 8 ft. sheets. It's plastered on the inside and the outside has the original clapboard attached to it. I found this out when I had to do some significant repairs around one door after removing the back deck and rot that went to the roofline, but I was glad to finally know how the house was constructed.
I really don't like drywall, I think its cheap crap. Lathe and plaster imo is a far superior material. I know drywall didn't come into common use until relatively recently. Do most older, pre-war homes still retain their plaster walls, or have they been replaced with drywall? I've only lived in one pre-war home, built in the 1920s, and it had drywall throughout.
I spent a few months with a roommate in his grandfather's 1910 house. You could even see where they tore out the wall to install electrical wiring. The old coal stove in the basement was still there as was the coal chute. When they did the walls, that was a real craftsman applying the plaster...Then wallpaper...That's not quite out of style but getting there.
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