We built our own interior walls from timber studs and originally thought that we would line the walls with plywood - timber-frame house has timber-lined walls. We were put off by the cost of fire-rated ply so reverted to gypsum plasterboard. Houses in the UK are traditionally lined with plasterboard and then skim-coated with wet plaster. This is a skilled task - tried it ourselves on smaller projects, not going there again.
So we experimented with the US approach of dry-lining walls. Tapered edge plasterboard is attached to the studs and then the joints are filled, making a smooth surface that mostly consists of the paper coating of the plasterboard sheets. There are lots of training videos on the University of YouTube. Our plasterer friend thought this was a bad idea because a skim coat is tougher so more resilient to knocks. We've had a go, are happy with the finish once it is sealed and have forged again with dry-lining.
So here are some lessons learned.
When screwing boards to the wall, use the special bit for your impact screwdriver - it's called a "mushroom" and stops the screw heads going in too far.
Remember to pack the walls with an acoustic damping material. We looked at sheepswool but couldn't justify the extra expense so used Rockwool.
Utility room wall - Our ceiling height is 2700 mm so we used longer boards, saving cutting and wastage.
In this pic, you can also see the MVHR duct for the kitchen extract and the orange water pipe for the sprinkler system.
The joints are filled in 3 stages using jointing knives of increasing width. The basic idea is to span the joint between tapered edges, feathering the edge of the plaster so everything is seamless.
Get a proper plaster tin - not the recycled plant pot shown in this pic. This will fall off the ladder, break and cause a marital crisis.
(The Americans call them "mud tins").
For internal corners and the joint between wall and ceiling, you can use a metal-backed paper tape to form a sharp 90 degree corner, embedding the paper in a layer of jointing compound. Much easier than it sounds.
External corners are more vulnerable to knocks so we used a lightweight plastic beading.
Dry-lining does involve sanding to get a good finish. We only sanded after the third coat, just running the knife over intermediate coats to remove high spots where plaster would build up. Sanding and the consequent dust is probably the main disadvantage of dry-lining.
We needed to build dropped ceilings to house our MVHR intakes / extracts and sprinkler heads. We used a metal frame system called Gypframe from British Gypsum. After a few hours of study on YouTube and a trial run in bedroom 3, we feel quite confident with it and have now constructed a ceiling on 2 levels in our open-plan area.
The MF ceiling is basically a grid, anchored to the walls by perimeter tracks and to the roof by hangers. When clipped together, it is impressively strong and rigid. The plasterboards are screwed into the lowermost steel section.
This is an essential bit of kit called a board-lifter. To see why, think about the alternative approach of propping up the board with a broom while trying to fix the screws ..
We bought a cheap one off the Internet - works well but the instructions in Polish are rubbish.
We are now looking forward to completing the walls and ceilings - it should all be over by Christmas - and finally cleaning up the plaster dust.
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