crazybikerchick

I'm considering demolishing one of my bedrooms in my house. The original plaster and lathe walls are pretty cracked and there's no insulation in them, and the room gets pretty drafty. With the rising cost of natural gas it would seem to be a project worth undertaking. I can't blow in insulation since there is only a small gap - the outer walls are double brick, so there are no studs. Thinking of putting in that stryofoam insulation stuff. Although I really prefer the aesthetic of plaster and lathe over drywall.

Thinking I'd like to buy the building supplies by bike trailer though I could obviously have them delivered or ask friend with van for a favour. I like to prove the point that it can be done by bike. Of the bike trailers I could borrow that would be big enough not sure of the specs or how easily I could put drywall on them without it bending. Anybody do this before and have pics?

Thanks. Oh and if I buy from the dreaded Home Despot its less than 1 km away so its a super short haul.

crackerdog

I don't know how much you intend to haul per trip but the Bikes At Work trailer was the strongest I could find to haul my construction equipment -300 lb rating.
I don't know which stryofoam stuff you are talking about but if it is the sheets of insulation, there are a number of types, some with more r-value per inch. Also, you could put drywall over any wall surface and them use Structolite instead of plaster. When I bought my house 10 years ago, I gutted it and made the 2x4 walls 6 inches thick by adding 2 inch strips to the studs. It was rental for years and known as a cold house but now it is cozy and I use about a third as much electicity to heat as my neighbor who has the same vintage/size house. People thought I was crazy back then, oh they are envious now. It is worth it and good luck.

Maxwell

As long as you can support the panels under the majority of their length and width, they should be fine. a sheet of plywood or a few 2x4's should do it.

As far as insulating, the priorities for a brick house would be: 1, Sealing up air leaks (a stick of incense is great for finding them). 2, insulating the attic. 3, insulating the walls. Also, it is possible to blow insulation into a double brick wall, it just requires drilling some holes. Also, if you've got siding, insulating under that is a good option, the more thermal mass inside your insulation the better.

Drywall can definitely be made to look like anything, with proper treatment, you can put a plaster topcoat over it the same way you'd normally put it over lath and brown. you can use a venetian plaster instead of painting. It is definitely an art though, and a good professional plasterer will be able to replicate the look of the old walls.

squirtdad

+1 When we remodeled the drywall guy used, if I recall correctly, a brand name coating called duraplast...it gave an old time plaster feel. I am sure there are better options, especially with a artisan plasterer.

I redid the basement...it had rought finish concrete 1/2 walls with drywall between wall and ceiling. I used regular (home depot) all purpose mud to to give the whole thing a rough plasteresque finishi.

have fun

Allen

Drywall is heavy (real, real heavy) and prone to breaking when not supported, and needs to lie flat so you don't crunch the edges.

Even if the Home Despot is right next door, I would consider having them deliver the sheet rock.
Due to its fragility, size, and weight, drywall is really better served if transported on the bed of a large vehicle.
You can always pick up the rest of your supplies by bike.

grayloon

Maxwell

Drywall is heavy, about 55 lbs per 1/2" sheet, but it's really not that fragile. Granted we've got a big truck, but we usually have a bunch of junk in the bed, and it's too heavy to get up on the lumber rack. We just put drywall on top of two 2x4's about 3' apart running lengthwise for support. A friend of mine has been fetching drywall for his house on a roof rack on his sedan. As long as you support most of the sheet, it's okay if you've got some cantilever.

CommuterRun

x2

For a project like this I would have all the materials delivered in bulk. I would use the bike and trailer to make runs for any other things I needed as the project progresses.

qmsdc15

Don't borrow a trailer, hire the guy with the trailer.

rm -rf

Brick walls that are two bricks thick usually have the plaster applied directly to the brick itself. There's a small gap for moisture control between the two brick layers, except for the courses of brick that are perpendicular to the face.

It's possible to insulate these walls, but it's complicated. You need wood strips attached to the brick wall so the drywall can be applied over the foam insulation sheets. Since the house was designed to be plastered, the interior bricks are often not very evenly laid, so any insulation sheet and wood filler strips won't fit flat against the wall.

The old plaster will be very heavy, too. It'll take a lot of trips with drywall buckets to haul it out.

It's not that easy to attach the wood strips, either, depending on what kinds of brick and mortar you have. They have to hold the weight of the drywall. All the wood trim, baseboards, and window frames have to be removed without too much damage. Finished lumber to match the new thickness of the wall have to be applied around the windows, then the wood trim nailed back up.

I helped a neighbor with her small bathroom wall. It's a 1910 house, with lime mortar and good bricks on the exterior and cheaper soft bricks under the plaster. I didn't want to nail into the bricks, and the mortar was too soft for nails to hold, so I used wood plugs and drywall screws on the 1x2 wood. And a lot of shims to make it level.

Platy

If it's only 1 km (0.6 mi), you could roll the drywall home on one of those Home Depot lumber carts. Last year I carted home a half size refrigerator from a nearby Best Buy. I asked the store manager for permission to borrow the cart "since it's just around the corner and that's the easiest way for me to get it home." They wanted to hold my drivers license while I borrowed the cart, but I had no problem with that.

bikesatwork

We hauled drywall on a Bikes At Work #96 trailer several years ago when we were doing work on our house. We put six 18 gal containers on the trailer so the drywall would have a flat place to rest and put the drywall on top. It worked fine.

You could carry it by resting it on the fenders and front of the trailer (this works well for carrying plywood), but as others have pointed out, you would run the risk of it cracking.

larry_llama

Our house (c.1910) is double brick, but the walls are separated from the brick by about 2". They had embedded strips of wood within the inner brick layer (running horizontally) and ran "Studs" vertically, shimmed and nailed to these embedded strips. The studs hold no weight - they simply held the lath

I do everything I can by bike, but drywall is going to be really tough. And removing the plaster is going to be a hell of a job. It is very very heavy. One large room in my house filled about 20 rubbermaid bins, each heavier than I could carry. - and could only take about 4-5 of them per trip by car to the dump. It would be difficult to carry more than one by bike. My opinion is, get all of the plaster down, put it in sturdy boxes (many small booxes so that they are a reasonable weight). Then rent or borrow a truck, dump it all in one go and pick up the drywall.

Good luck - should be a rewarding project!

HSean

I actualy saw a trailer that would haul that stuff, it was a big rectangle shape with wheels and a hitch, it was basicly a big flatbed, I think it would haul that no problem

dscheidt

There are gypsum boards that are designed to be coated with plaster (actual plaster, not drywall mud). They're commonly called "blue board", because the paper coating is blue. It goes up like normal drywall, gets taped, and then is coated with a veneer of plaster. This gives the advantages of plaster -- looks, durability. waterproofness, texture, with a lot of advantage of drywall (It's much faster than plaster and lath). Plus you don't need to sand it, so there's no dust, and you can tint the plaster so you don't need to paint, until you decide that purple wasn't really what you wanted.

moore.sean

$19 truck at Home Despot for the drywall. Best option, probably. Use bike to go back and get those little things we always forget.

stevel610 

One caution, not about the drywall, but the insulation. If you are insulating the attic, be sure you do not insulate over the wiring if it is "Post and Tube". P/T was used in houses built in the earlier decades of the last century. You can recognize it by the ceramic posts on, and small tubes through, the joists in the ceiling. There will also be 2 wires, one on each side of the space between ceiling joists (one positive/one negative). These can overheat if insulation in put over them potentially causing a fire.

talleymonster

5/8 drywall (the most common size), is 2.2lbs per square foot. Assuming that you are buying 4x8 foot sheets, they will weigh about 70.4 pounds per sheet.