old school drywall???

[383 240z]

While tearing apart of my old house I ran across an obsolete building practice.

I has 16" wide drywall running horizontal. Then it looks that they parged a layer of damn near cement over that and plastered the final coat, before paint. Any body have any idea when this practice went out of commonplace? I'm trying to figure when that portion of my home was remolded, I have found a LOT of pre-WW2 newspapers in the walls in that section of the house so Im thinking that time period, When we re-did my grandfathers house that was built in 1953, I seem to remember 4x8 sheets of drywall. Keith

 

[mrb]

that is a type of lath. it usually has holes in it for the plaster to key into, but i have also seen it without the holes and the plaster just keys into the gaps between the strips.

 

[blue dog]

were there holes in the drywall that the plaster could get a purchase on when applied. if so, that is called button board and was used in the 30"s,40's, maybe into the 50's, not sure when it was stopped being used. prior to that it was lath and plaster, the lath consisted of 1/4" by 2" or so strips nailed by hand to the framing and plaster was applied on that. that is a lot of labor before air nailers.

 

[GarageEnvy]

My house was built in 1955 and has a similar system. If yours is the same it probably has perforated holes every couple of inches for that top layer to bond to/through. Mine also has heavy metal mesh embedded on the seems. The stuff is wicked sharp and extremely difficult to remove without bringing a cutoff tool into the house (not real popular with wife or safe). My drywall contractor said it was only used for a short period of time in the 1950's. It was some sort of in between technology that was post lath and plaster and pre-drywall. It is very tough though.

 

[kursplat]

where are you 383 240Z? my house, built in 49' in southern california, has lath and plaster. steel mesh, what a ***** to open a clean hole in. rotozip don't much care for it either

 

[abnorm]

Rock Lath......2' x 4' sheets

....... readily available in (Buffalo) New York in the late 60's

 

[katit]

My house 1959 build - St. Louis - same deal. 2x4 drywall with concrete/metal/plaster on top.

 

[383 240z]

No holes but plenty of expanded metal over the joints the main house was built in 1831, with a large addition built in 1855, The main house is built from American Chestnut using mortise and tennon joints, and barn construction. The addition is built using ballon construction. It is in western Pa about 40 miles north of Pittsburgh, Keith

 

[cheap bastard]

I had a house built in 1929 that had the stuff without holes. The old guys locally called it fireproof lath. The paper on it was some tough stuff.

 

[dansmurf]

My first house in NY had just as you described. No holes but lots of metal mesh. It was built in 54.

 

[wbclassics]

I have this wall board construction in my NY (Syracuse) house which was built in 1949. It is exceptionally tough and difficult to to near impossible to cut with a hand held drywall saw.

I haven't seen any perforated holes in the boards, simply 16" wide with gaps in between each board. The board itself seems to be 1/4-5/16" thick, with an equal thickness top coat that appears to contain some sort of stone aggregate. Corners and seems have heavy diamond wire mesh imbedded in the top layer.

I also own a home in PA that was built about five years later (1954) in an early suburban development and that home has drywall.