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What are these walls and ceilings made from?

What are these walls and ceilings made from?


  #1  
Old 02-19-07, 08:35 PM
S
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What are these walls and ceilings made from?

My house was built in 1971. The walls are very hard and in some areas look kind of like there is a skim coat or something on them. I am in the process of attempting to remove the popcorn (if thats even what this is) ceiling and noticed that the texture isnt like normal popcorn. Its very hard and doesnt come off when its scraped with the hand like most popcorn i have seen. I have tried scraping the ceilings and wetting them and everything and they dont budge. I dont think that its a normal popcorn. Anways i went to the airvent and chipped off where is meets the vent and noticed that the ceiling arent normal drywall. They are hard almost cement like. I have seen them from the crawl space and the ceiling looks like smaller sheets of drywall but very hard. Any clue what they are made out of and any tips on remving the texture? Should i just scrape the crowns off and sand smooth. Doesnt need to be perfect because i a going to use knockdown.





 
  #2  
Old 02-20-07, 08:25 AM
T
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What size, and color are the sheets behind the plaster? When you ay they are harder than drywall how much harder? Like concrete?
Is the whole house like this? Only ceilings?
A house built in 1971 could have gypsum lath with plaster but the lath is about the same hardness as drywall. You could have cement board but that would be quite unusual. The pink basecoat makes me think it might be plastered with Durabond. I don't know why someone would do that. Most likely you have gypsum plaster over gypsum lath with a plaster texture. The best thing to do is to skim the texture with joint compound until it's smooth then texture it. To get the plaster texture off is very hard. You can do it in small areas but I doubt if you want ot wolr that hard to do a whole room. Smooth it out then texture but I shure would like to know more about what you have so tell us and we might have some other ideas.
 
 

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