22 ms·

i live in an older apartment building that has plaster and lath walls. it definitely has better sound isolation, thermal mass, and mold resistance in my experie

i live in an older apartment building that has plaster and lath walls. it definitely has better sound isolation, thermal mass, and mold resistance in my experience than drywall. what pains me is that the building manager is a moron (short-term cost minimizer) and replaces the plaster with drywall whenever a significant repair is needed. drywall sounds hollow when you tap it while plaster replies with a satisfying 'thunk'. in fairness, it's harder to repair correctly, especially for large damage, though i have patched the wall myself with anything from patching compound to joint compound to spackle (which i understand as being similar in its constituent ingredients but not quite the same).

arghnoname 4y ago
Plaster is on the one hand, harder to repair correctly, but on the other hand, can be repaired more seamlessly if done well. It kills me when people replace plaster with drywall. Sometimes they'll even have it all torn out and replaced because they just need to do some repair or are doing a renovation and just want all the mess to happen up front and tacking drywall up is cheap and easy later on. So stupid. In my last house I retiled the tub and behind the tub they had mold-resistant drywall that they used as a tile substrate (this isn't proper, but it's common enough that people think it's proper.) The drywall was nailed into plaster, which itself was covered in wallpaper. Taking all this down to fix it I found the wallpaper and drywall was moldy, but the plaster itself was not moldy. The spores just wiped right off. It's great stuff.
- clairity 4y ago
  yah, both can be repaired to be visually seamless, but plaster can be functionally seamless too. mold seems to love drywall but can at least be scrubbed off plaster. i've done this with bleach, which apparently some mold is resistent to, and then topped it with mold-resistent paint (since it was under/behind sinks/vanities, i didn't really care if the color matching wasn't perfect). when i was researching how to repair plaster, i learned that old-school plasterers used to make 3 passes to make it perfectly smooth on top while thick and sturdy throughout, starting with a rough "brown" layer for the bulk to a fine white layer for aesthetics and water resistance. it takes skill to do but the results are both visually pleasing and resilient (having lasted ~100 years so far in my building).
  - arghnoname 4y ago
    Yep, this is the traditional three-coat. What’s interesting is the framing need not be perfect. You can correct a quarter inch off true across a wall without too much trouble by varying the thickness of the brown and scratch coat. In my old house the framing way way out of wack and the drywall would have visible bends if forced to adhere to it. Making the final wall true when dealing with imperfect framing is done with the dot and screed method. You can also add dyes into the finish coat and leave it unpainted. Shame plaster has died out for most construction.

arghnoname 4y ago

Plaster is on the one hand, harder to repair correctly, but on the other hand, can be repaired more seamlessly if done well. It kills me when people replace plaster with drywall. Sometimes they'll even have it all torn out and replaced because they just need to do some repair or are doing a renovation and just want all the mess to happen up front and tacking drywall up is cheap and easy later on. So stupid. In my last house I retiled the tub and behind the tub they had mold-resistant drywall that they used as a tile substrate (this isn't proper, but it's common enough that people think it's proper.) The drywall was nailed into plaster, which itself was covered in wallpaper. Taking all this down to fix it I found the wallpaper and drywall was moldy, but the plaster itself was not moldy. The spores just wiped right off. It's great stuff.

clairity 4y ago
yah, both can be repaired to be visually seamless, but plaster can be functionally seamless too. mold seems to love drywall but can at least be scrubbed off plaster. i've done this with bleach, which apparently some mold is resistent to, and then topped it with mold-resistent paint (since it was under/behind sinks/vanities, i didn't really care if the color matching wasn't perfect). when i was researching how to repair plaster, i learned that old-school plasterers used to make 3 passes to make it perfectly smooth on top while thick and sturdy throughout, starting with a rough "brown" layer for the bulk to a fine white layer for aesthetics and water resistance. it takes skill to do but the results are both visually pleasing and resilient (having lasted ~100 years so far in my building).
- arghnoname 4y ago
  Yep, this is the traditional three-coat. What’s interesting is the framing need not be perfect. You can correct a quarter inch off true across a wall without too much trouble by varying the thickness of the brown and scratch coat. In my old house the framing way way out of wack and the drywall would have visible bends if forced to adhere to it. Making the final wall true when dealing with imperfect framing is done with the dot and screed method. You can also add dyes into the finish coat and leave it unpainted. Shame plaster has died out for most construction.