repairing things

Is drywall the same as plasterboard or not or is it not even a simple yes/no but the dreaded "it depends"

very close to the same but plasterboard is specifically designed to be plastered over whereas drywall just gets joint compound plastered over the joints

https://www.hunker.com/12616166/differences-between-gypsum-board-and-plasterboard

xp those mesh things can be tricky on walls and might fall off a ceiling unless supported as PBKR suggests

last time I had to do a drywall repair I watched a bunch of YouTube videos ... many were not relevant to my tiny job, but I gained some reassuring general knowledge and was able to do a California patch that looks pretty good (it would look even better if we painted it to match the wall color)

xp the entire party wall is fuckin wrapped in some kind of foil, alas

Wonderful for insulation no doubt but the fuckin studfinder is useless as a result for anything along that part

Im just hoping that the yungfella who gave me the screws and the go ahead to start drilling into what he presumed was brick beyond the boatd knew what he was talking about, or else....

lol just use those spiral plasterboard fixings and don't actually put anything on your shelf ffs!

lol pbkr that fan story is terrifying and amazing

― Tracer Hand, Monday, November 8, 2021 7:22 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've got loads of house horror stories.

i put little cable clamps down on my speaker wire in my new place, for the left speaker, running up and across a doorway, then back down to the other side and the receiver. felt pretty good because my friend let me borrow these little clamp pieces where you have to nail them in, and even my tiny skeleton fingers were big enough to get in the way of the hammer, so much. i was basically 80% hammering the nail and 20% hammering my thumb, on purpose, because that was the only way.

just throwing this in here because it was a Small Victory but also probably <.0001% of normal handy person skill for normal day-to-day things.

just don't try putting a drywall anchor in where there's a stud ;_; xp

for patching largish troublesome holes I'd screw a bit of random timber in there like the old style latts you'd get in those disgusting old black lime walls for something for it to cling to.

This is the way we patched drywall holes. Stretch of scrap wood or two screwed across the hole, piece of drywall cut to fit, tape bed & texture. The mesh screens are harder to make invisible IMO.

I have hit ceiling fans with sheets on more than one occasion, it is a miracle I've never ripped one out of the ceiling.

just don't try putting a drywall anchor in where there's a stud ;_; xp

― certified juice therapist (harbl), Tuesday, 9 November 2021 00:47 (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Great another fuckin thing to worry about!

but the bonus is there that you've fucked up a plasterboard fixing but also found a solid fixing point!

hah hah unless by some bad luck you just happened to find a bit of the joist in a wiring zone and there is a steel plate on it or not!

oh god lol it's true

those plates have burned me more than once

Bad enough I couldn't sleep before this thread yiz animals

sorry I forgot to put "wiring zone" in scare quotes!

I have successsfully used a magnet to locate studs: rub it gently over the plasterboard and it should detect the nails or screws in the studs; once you've found two or three you get an idea of where the studs are.

never thought of that before, it would have to be a very strong magnet I guess? but looking online you can get super strong neodymium magnets for pocket change.

I've had shit luck with those drywall mesh patches, they always left an obvious mound no matter how smooth I got the surface. I've had much better luck actually making the hole big enough to screw a brace in from behind then putting a cut piece of drywall in the opening.

I'm posting this example video because of my crush on Tom Silva:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLGmTzEGSIY

My current house is from 1938 and has several additions over the years (I can see five totally separate wood floor in my upstairs hallway) and the outer walls are made of concrete block so some walls are modern drywall, some are 83 year old plaster and lathe, some are cinder block, some have regular 16" stud spacing, some do not, etc.

The wall I decided to mount guitar hangers turns out to be drywall added over the top of existing plaster and lathe. The studs have 3 inches of wall material over them and couldn't be found without drilling a number of exploratory holes and having to use 5 1/2" screws to mount everything.

I have successsfully used a magnet to locate studs: rub it gently over the plasterboard and it should detect the nails or screws in the studs; once you've found two or three you get an idea of where the studs are.

I have never had any luck with stud finders. Seems like the whole damn wall has a stud behind it. Or none.

But that makes sense. Hell, it's probably how a stud finder works in the first place and not by, I dunno, sonar like I've always thought.

it puts out like a wave or something to measure density, not magnetic

I guess my walls aren't the only things that are dense then.

not a wave i guess. that would be more like sonar. it's based on whether things conduct electricity?

But there you go, it's looking for the metal, not so much the wood.

I've never had much luck with them either, they only seem to work really well if you've got newer construction with metal studs. Allegedly, the best bet with wood studs is to find a stud located along the seam of a drywall panel joint, where there will be more nails to hold the drywall edge in place and thus more chances for the magnet to pick something up.

Our current house is from the 1920's and has thick as fuck plaster walls that render a stud finder pretty much useless.

xpost - some are magnetic, but yes others measure density (the latter are the ones that I never have luck with)

NB I've never tried any of the newer, extra wide ones that are supposedly much better.

The only time I’ve had difficulty with studfinders is when the walls are plaster with those skinny boards behind it. Lath boards?

Yeah, lath.

But there you go, it's looking for the metal, not so much the wood.

― pplains, Tuesday, November 9, 2021 9:58 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

no because other things conduct electricity too. even you. are YOU metal?

i don't really know how it works but i'm going to imagine it's like my fancy scale that says i am 3% bones. like a stud finder for your body.

But wood doesn't conduct electricity! And that's what studs are usually made of!

that's what she said

*points studfinder to chest* it's beeping hahahahaha

I'm just glad it wasn't me that finally broke the stud barrier on this thread.

Electric stud finders are able to measure the dialectric (resistivity) of the material by trying to induce an eddy current. Kind of like reading the electrical "density" - metal have low dialectric, as do humans due to water content; wood and plaster and air have high dialectric.

Aka magic

Wow yet another thread about investigating the dialectic

A good stud finder will actually let you find the exact edge (width) of the stud. It's not just finding a random nail in the stud.

this thread inspired me to dig out a DIY synth project i'd gotten annoyed with and put away years ago and fuck with it some more. thanks thread!

!!! that's fun!

You know what’s not fun? Dealing with a county planning board to rebuild a shed in my backyard that’s covered in lead paint and falling down. The shit they’ve put me through

F'ING SQUEAKY DOOR. I mean i know it's small beer compared to other things in this thread. but ffs. it's also one of those things you only remember you need to do every time you encounter it but forget immediately after.

one of the most mind blowing moments i've ever experienced was when i was hanging out with some of my druggie friends in glasgow doing absolutely nothing and one of their friends came over and drew a can of oil from her handbag, exactly like you might see one drawn in a cartoon, with a needle-like spout and a convex bottom that made a little POINK sound if you pushed it, and she went over to this one door that had squeaked outrageously ever since anyone could remember and she just squirted a couple of drops of oil on the hinges and suddenly it was as quiet as an ant pissing on cotton and i thought to myself tearily, 'once, you could kick a ball in the street'

hah, a bit of 70's nostalgia "every home had a little can of 3 in 1 oil in the pantry" (usually next to some unused carcinogenic weed killer from the 50's with a faded label).

Its magic, reminds me i have one to do downstairs actually

a certain member of this board once oiled the door of the upstairs area in the Lexington because it was squeaking during a quiet acoustic sunday afternoon gigs he was co-hosting. fixed it right up.

The street door here kept catching and then i used WD40 on it and it closed automatically. So the idiot next door started leaving it on the latch and even bringing the handle around so it looked like it was locked. Never knew whether to think he was actually trying to get one over on me and failing massively or just putting himself out an extra bit because he was a twat or what.

i have one that has like so much emulsion paint wedged into the hinge that an oiling lasts a few days at most. i can hear it sqeaking right now