What you have is most likely gypsum lath (not really called sheetrock) with
plaster. This is small 16" x 48" x 3/8" gypsum sheets (made to be plastered)
with brown coat base plaster covered with white finishing plaster. There
should not be wire mesh over the whole area, it was typically placed on
outside and inside corners and over areas prone to cracking such as the top
corners of doors and openings.

Unless you only have a couple of patches, it would be simpler to gut and
install regular drywall sheetrock. This is the ideal time to fix/add any
wiring, lights, switches, plumbing adjustments, and to upgrade the
insulation and install a code specified vapor barrier.

Rooms with minor fixes, could be patched, other areas with lots of openings
should be gutted. New drywall is relatively easy to install.


"MiamiCuse" wrote in message
...
This week I had someone come and bid on installing sheet rock on my house.
After he looked it over he gave me some valuable advice and said I should
fix a few things first then call him to do the job.

So here are some of the things I am fixing.

In my house, about 60% of the sheetrock were removed. Some rooms have
both walls and ceiling removed, some only walls, some only ceiling,
depending on what was being modified.

He said that in some rooms, where I asked him to patch some holes, that
it's cheaper and easier to gut and replace then to patch. For example,
one room I had five holes in the ceiling. I did not make the holes, the
electricians did. When they rewired they did not get into the attic, so
they punched random holes in my ceiling to pass the wires and conduits.
They told me it would be easy fix for the sheetrock guys. Now the
sheetrock guy says they are not easy fix. He can do it but it will not be
as good looking and it will be more expensive then using new sheetrock.

The reason he said these are hard to patch, is because it is not typical
sheet rock. In some areas he said I have sheet rock, then a "brown coat",
then plaster, with embeded wire mesh in them. He said it is a pain to
patch, and difficult to patch perfectly.

Same with a hallway. I have one hallway that is fifty feet long. About
thirty feet of this sheetrock was removed and now we have to put new.
Again, he said, rip out the other twenty feet, put new 1/2" sheet rock.
Otherwise, I will have to match the old "thickness" which is slightly more
than 3/4". He said it would be expensive to mix 1/2" and 3/4" and the
result may be questionable.

So in a null shell, he is recommending that I demolish ALL my sheet rock -
all walls, all ceilings instead of dealing with a mix of old and new.

This week, I started to look at demolishing one room's ceiling, and
immediately ran into problems. Some sheetrock in the ceiling seem to span
into other rooms. For example, one interior wall's top plate actually is
below the sheetrock, meaning the sheetrock is sandwiched between the top
plate and the bottom of the joist. So to take that ceiling down, I have
to make a cut on both sides of the top plate to free the sheetrock. This
is a mess. Using a grinder with a diamond blade to cut through this
sheetrock/brown coat/plaster/wire mesh is slow and dusty. I thought
framing of the walls is done before sheetrock? How can sheetrock be on
top of the top plate?