Alternatives to sheetrock?

[abraham]

a simplistic statement perhaps ^^

"Straw bale houses aren’t for folks who like straight lines and clean edges. Someone who’s, say, a perfectionist probably shouldn’t build a straw bale house. Someone who likes crisp corners and symmetry might want to stick to drywall and stud frames.

But if you, like us, love a little wabi-sabi, straw bale building offers a type of forgiveness only found in nature.

So right up akrover's alley. However I don't think you can just fill the walls with mud and straw. You have to start from scratch, right?

[Skistack]

Cement board and tile. That'll make cleaning up the blood alot easier.

[old goat]

So right up akrover's alley. However I don't think you can just fill the walls with mud and straw. You have to start from scratch, right?

works fine until the big bad wolf shows up.

[XXX-er]

So right up akrover's alley. However I don't think you can just fill the walls with mud and straw. You have to start from scratch, right?

well Amanda had to buy the straw bails in Alberta and have them trucked 12hrs for what reason I forget even tho we live in a valley with lots of farms that grow hay

in this particular style the house was built post n beam the bales were stacked into walls and then covered in a mixture of clay & and loose straw

so you could think of it as building walls with straw bales as building blocks and then stuccoing both sides with a clay/straw mixture

http://northword.ca/life/straw-bale-tales/ might as well post a link

[old goat]

One alternative to regular sheetrock is blueboard and skim coat plaster. Blueboard being a form of sheetrock. Nice for an old house to give the right look, saves a few steps in installation. Hard to find people who can do it--takes much more skill than slapping on drywall compound. I would never bother with it in a POS rental.'

Another alternative--clear heart redwood from an old water tank, which is what my main room is paneled with. Might be a touch spendy.

[splat]

Fuck it. Just wall paper everything, holes and all.

old goat - I have a wood heated octagonal hot tub I made with 2-3/4" x 22'' x 22' clear heart redwood planks salvaged from the old Agnews Hospital in San Jose in the early 80s. They used that shit for floor/ceiling joists way back when.

[XXX-er]

One alternative to regular sheetrock is blueboard and skim coat plaster. Blueboard being a form of sheetrock. Nice for an old house to give the right look, saves a few steps in installation. Hard to find people who can do it--takes much more skill .

I have a ski bud from montreal who can do the skim coats, the lathe plaster, the repair of plaster in old buildings and wouldn't you know it ...he is a telemarker

[old goat]

Fuck it. Just wall paper everything, holes and all.

old goat - I have a wood heated octagonal hot tub I made with 2-3/4" x 22'' x 22' clear heart redwood planks salvaged from the old Agnews Hospital in San Jose in the early 80s. They used that shit for floor/ceiling joists way back when.

We also have massive posts and beams salvaged from an Oakland Pier. When the Truckee Donner PUD took over the Donner Lake Water Company and demolished the leaking redwood water tanks we were hoping to get some of the wood--my wife was one of the people* who got the takeover done--but I guess they sold them off.

*RIP Kathy Polucha Kessler--La Traviata Avalanche victim and all around wonderful person

[riser4]

Make sure the renters don't have a pet porcupine.

I don't care who you are, that right there is funny.

[leroy jenkins]

Some might recommend building a house out of MDF. Since youre in AK I recommend building your house of MTF, that is, Matanuska Thunderfuck.

[Art Shirk]

Lath and plaster? Have a blast with that.

"Why is this nail bouncing back when I hammer it?"
- mrs commonlaw


To the OP, it's cheaper if you buy the Chinese stuff.

[tuco]

I have a ski bud from montreal who can do the skim coats, the lathe plaster, the repair of plaster in old buildings and wouldn't you know it ...he is a telemarker

Can he also jump buildings with a single bound?

[DougW]

well Amanda had to buy the straw bails in Alberta and have them trucked 12hrs for what reason I forget even tho we live in a valley with lots of farms that grow hay

in this particular style the house was built post n beam the bales were stacked into walls and then covered in a mixture of clay & and loose straw

so you could think of it as building walls with straw bales as building blocks and then stuccoing both sides with a clay/straw mixture

http://northword.ca/life/straw-bale-tales/ might as well post a link

straw and hay are two different things, straw is the stalk of grain

[goldenboy]

Like someone else said, drywall is easy, and easy to fix no matter what kind of renters you have.

Lots of different ways to build a strawbale house. A friend of mine did a really cool video, check it out:

[old goat]

I have a ski bud from montreal who can do the skim coats, the lathe plaster, the repair of plaster in old buildings and wouldn't you know it ...he is a telemarker

My mother in law used to have a beach house in Puerto Penasco, Sonora, Mexico. The new MacMansions were all being built out of cinder block covered with plaster. Those Mexican plasterers were really good. I kept think about how much money they could be making in the States, with no competition.

[brice618]

It's cheaper to cover concrete block with studs and drywall than to pay people to plaster it (In the states anyways).


Used to - houses had 3/4" ship lap siding interior with only a 1/4" gyp bd on top. I helped a buddy tear all his old gyp out and we stuck with exposed ship lap. That ship lap actually looks pretty cool in the right context, but it won't be cheaper than gyp now. Nothing will be. You're only option with cheaper would be to somehow find a place with some salvageable lumber that you can get for free and put up yourself.

[XXX-er]

straw and hay are two different things, straw is the stalk of grain

yeah I know that and grain is grown around here as well but the salient point in a thread about cheap building materials was that she had to truck straw > 1000 kms to mix with clay

[XXX-er]

Can he also jump buildings with a single bound?

no but even tho he was pretty good buddy used to fall > the the rest of us on dynafits, but my point would be whom but a telewanker would bother to learn the old style plastering when nowdays a drywaller can just hang/tape/mud the sheetrock and collect the money?

[Alaskan Rover]

no but even tho he was pretty good buddy used to fall > the the rest of us on dynafits, but my point would be whom but a telewanker would bother to learn the old style plastering when nowdays a drywaller can just hang/tape/mud the sheetrock and collect the money?

Plastering is to sheetrock as lead work is to bondo in an automobile restoration. It is an craft rather than simply a skill. Well done plaster, like well done leading, is awesome and I think perhaps more durable in the long run. But it does have its bad points. It tends to chip away in chunks if not using a pilot hole and concrete bit. It also cracks over time, with slight foundational shifts, whereas sheetrock cracks less due to the paper on both sides.

When I was growing up, we lived for a few years in an old house in Geneva Switzerland...it had plaster throughout...and big old beams and posts. The plaster wasn't perfect and it wasn't really supposed to be.

[XXX-er]

Yup buddy was a craftsman for sure he also showed us picts of the house he built using the wood from a couple of 150 yr old barns, the finishing was fucking amazing

We did a bike tour in AK to get out of the constant rain I stayed in a cabin paneled on the inside with OSB and decorated in old beer promotions and it was fucking grim, I don't recommend bike touring in AK or paneling a room in OSB

[iceman]

In New England they do a lot of plaster over blueboard still.