dpb was thinking very hard :
On 12/30/2015 10:38 AM, DerbyDad03 wrote:
On Wednesday, December 30, 2015 at 11:00:30 AM UTC-5, Eagle wrote:
FrozenNorth pretended :
...

I worked in California, so there are no basements to speak of, and most
of the interior plaster walls are 2'X4' 1/2" wall board with metal mesh
used in inside corners and fiberglass tape on joints. Gypsum plaster is
spread over that lath and when cured and dry, "puttycoat" is spread
over the gypsum resulting in a very hard wall.

I have very similar walls in my 1956-era house in the northeast US. The
"2'X4' 1/2" wall board" that you mention is gypsum board, laid
perpendicular to the studs (i.e. horizontal).

The insides of the walls look similar to this, although my gypsum boards
are 6" (8"?) wide, not 2'. I'm not sure about the length. It's been a while
since I tore any walls down, so the exact width and length of the gypsum
board has been forgotten, but I'm confident that it is not 2', not even
1' wide.

http://inspectapedia.com/interiors/P...Board31DFs.jpg

My walls measure about 3/4" thick. The metal mesh in the corners and
at the ceiling junctions make certain types of repairs and/or renovations
a real PITA. Patches in the open field need to be shimmed out to become
flush with the rest of the wall/ceiling.

"Plaster lath" system...

www.tsib.org/pdf/technical/70-101-Gypsum-Lath-Behind-Gypsum-Plaster.pdf

We used it quite a lot doing reno's of the old Federal-era mansions in
Lynchburg, VA, back when a young pup and were refurb'ing many of these with
friends moving in just out of school. They had been converted to rooms and
terribly cut up an all, but one could get a whole lot of house for almost
nothing as compared to new construction if one was willing to do the
necessary refurbishing. We as a group of new hires (roughly 1000 over about
three years) basically did a major revitalization of a significant area in
older part of Lynchburg.

There were about a half-dozen of us who made the renovation business a
sideline occupation serving the purpose. I mostly concentrated on the
interior architectural woodwork but these systems were used extensively as
opposed to original lath and plaster as faster and cheaper but still able to
match surface thicknesses and such that were extremely variable in those old
houses.

They were 16" systems then as the above mentions; I never ran into anything
narrower than that; I suppose there were likely local manufacturers as well
with other products.

I bet that was very interesting doing the renos on those old buildings.
I worked on the old court building in Downtown San Diego making it
earthquake proof and rebuilding the old plaster cieling mouldings. Only
a small handful of old plasterers had the knowlege and skill needed to
referb the court cielings. We did "bench moulds" of the original
architecture and attached them to the cielings using gypsum putty.
We worked on our backs some 50 feet up!