October 14, 2011

Heating Up: Drylining - Days 1 & 2

Having set the string line that locates where new plasterboards board will go, it's finally time to start drylining. As mentioned in the previous post, drylining involves hanging plaster slightly off the face of an old wall using dabs of a special adhesive plaster. As with much of the work we've encountered, it sounds simple, but requires a lot of labor.

I started in the corner of our new, enlarged living room, where the old kitchen used to be, and where I had just recently leveled the floor. This portion of wall was one of the grottiest in the flat as the old kitchen was in a truly nasty state - I was looking forward to covering it.
Morning of October 13 - the old wall
Since I had never done this before, I started slowly - carefully measuring the board and mixing the adhesive. Taking the advice of our Building Control officer, I also prepared a series of screws to provide additional support for each board. Once everything was ready, the adhesive is slapped onto the wall in a pattern that provides consistent support for the board. The board is then pushed onto the adhesive dabs, and the screws are fastened while carefully trying to line up the board with the string line and leveling it.
The dabs of adhesive ready for the first board
The first board pressed into place
So after the first board was up, I just started moving down the wall. I soon realized that the wall needed to be fully stripped of all the old wallpaper and then scratched up to provide additional places for the adhesive to grab onto. Scraping the walls ended up being time consuming, but  it was important to ensurethe adhesive had something more substantial to grab onto.
Putting the plaster adhesive onto the next area
Almost ready to place the 4th board
Pushing the board into place
The screws to provide additional mechanical adhesion to the wall.
End of the day - the first area completed
It took the whole day to set the first half of the wall, but once it was done we could see how much of a improvement it made. The next day continued on with more of the same to finish the other half...
Morning of Oct 14th - starting point
Scraping off all the old wallpaper so the adhesive can stick to something better
Under this window we had exposed brick, so I used some wood to make it easier
The last piece in place!
Looking down our newly drylined wall