"RogerT" wrote in message
...
This is regarding a possible rehab of another property that I own. It's
an older home with wood lath and plaster wall. I am considering tearing
out the lath and plaster down to the studs, then having it rewired
throughout, then having the ceilings and walls sheetrocked. I would
rather not sheetrock over the existing lath and plaster.

My question is about how contractors typically go about doing the
sheetrock over the old ceiling joists and wall studs. How do they deal
with the fact that after the demo of the original lath and plaster, the
ceiling joists and studs are often uneven -- that is, not "planed".

Do they usually just do the new sheetrock by going with what they have and
just shimming the areas that need to be shimmed to end up with a flat,
"planed", and even new sheetrock wall? Is there some other way that this
is usually done?

Thanks everyone for all of the thoughts and suggestions.

I was hoping there was some magic solution out there that would make the new
sheetrocking fairly easy and would make it go quickly. It looks like I'll
probably have to go the route of shimming etc.

In the past when I have encountered this, it was only for a ceiling in one
room at a time. In those cases, we decided to just go with sistering the
existing joists to create a new flat and planed surface to attach the new
sheetrock. In one case, we used wood 2x4's for the sistering and in another
case we used steel framing for the sister joists.

But, with this project, it would involve a lot of ceilings and walls, so
sistering all of those seems like it would be too much to get into doing.