Well, I am tackling a DIY business improvement project. I may as well,

[kestrel91316]

since my services aren't in much demand these days........sigh.

The wall in my front hallway of the office has had a recurrence of a crack that originally developed after the Northridge earthquake in 1994. It was hastily patched and painted, but eventually came back and the drywall was getting displaced and unsightly. My landlord was ok with my pulling out the drywall in the hall and putting in insulation, since I had recently determined that there was NO INSULATION in this exterior wall, lol. NONE. No wonder it gets so hot in the hall and that one exam room in the summer. Jeebus H. Christ.

So I did a little "destructive testing" over the weekend just to survey the situation, saw there was no rot or damaged framing (DID find evidence of an ancient car vs wall incident that has been covered over on the outside but shows on the inside of the exterior, lol), so I bought some rolls of fiberglass ($9 ea for the mini-rolls of R-13) and started plotting my project.

Today my assistant had to leave real early for a doctor's appointment, and the phone wasn't ringing, and I had ZERO afternoon appointments, so I said what the heck, changed the answering machine, locked the front door, and rolled up my sleeves.

I had to improvise a dust barrier to keep from making a mess of my assistant's front desk, and I am sure she is going to fuss about the very fine dust tomorrow anyway. I put on old clothes, got the hammer, and worked out my frustrations for a good 4 hours. Interestingly, I found that the wall was not drywall per se, but rather a sheet of what is known as rock lath, or plasterboard (about 1/4" thick), with a good 1/2" of plaster (1 thick and then 2 thin layers that I could identify). So instead of this being drywall from the remodel before I bought it (where I thought they just ignored code and didn't insulate), it's actually the original wall from 1960. Scarily, the plasterboard is only attached to the studs with nails that look about 1 1/4", and then only about every 8". Sheesh, why bother attaching it at all if that's all you're going to do?

After demolishing a preliminary section of 32" wide by about 7' high, I tidied up the edges and put insulation in. One of the two spaces I insulated was only 14" wide rather than the normal 16", because there is a double stud. Not sure why, but as I work my way over to the right I may see what that's about. The wall already looks better, even with it all ripped open, lol. That nice, insulated space with the brown kraft paper facing makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. We will see if there is a payoff come summertime.

I think I will just do the rest of the demolition and insulation next weekend. The dust management is awfully time-consuming. But now I know what is involved and have got my technique down. And when it comes time to drywall, I have a general contractor client who owes me, and since he has NO money and lots of time on his hands these days, he will jump at the chance to help me install it. I may just do the mud and painting myself. This is a small project, after all.

I was sort of intimidated by the whole thing, and was originally going to take my landlord up on his offer to go halvsies on the project (the repair was only needed on a small section - the demolition and insulation and replacement of drywall was MY idea and I REALLY insisted on it), but so far my cash outlay on materials is only about $25 (insulation and some caulk that I didn't even need), and I only need 3 or 4 sheets of drywall at $12 ea for the 3/4" greenboard that I need.

One of the reasons I wanted to tackle this myself (aside from not wanting to spend scarce $$ on hiring somebody else to do it) is because someday I want to get an old fixer-upper house (NOT in CA, lol), and a little bit of experience with this stuff is very helpful.

Well, that was about the longest DU post I've ever written. And I have never posted on this forum before (DIY), lol.

Oh, and if this project makes an obvious difference in the heat level in the hall, I will proceed with the second phase, which is to do the same demolition/insulation/drywalling in the first exam room. It has some fine cracks along the plasterboard joints (now that I know what those are), and that room gets beastly hot from the summer sun on the wall. I would do blown-in insulation there, but I am finding "fireblocks" or whatever you call the boards that go horizontally from stud to stud at random places, so fiberglass batts are the way to go. Plus, I just hate that damned plaster. Next big quake it's all just going to fall to pieces.

[NMDemDist2]

1. congratulations!

sounds like time well spent

:yourock:

:hi:

[kestrel91316]

2. You know what's really funny? The Persian lady nextdoor at the print shop

came over to see what I was doing, and was all in a lather that I was doing such a thing MYSELF! She kept insisting that I have somebody else do it, that I should be after the landlord to have HIM do it, and I just laughed. I told her I ENJOY DOING STUFF LIKE THIS!!! She just didn't get it.

I reassured her that I would only do a little at a time. She was sure I was going to hurt myself. I may have a few tiny aches tomorrow, but for pete's sake, it's just a little hammering and prying and dust. And If I tried to hire somebody to do it, they'd probably want $1000.

[eleny]

3. Congrats from me, too

It's nice knowing more about the places where we live and/or work!

[kestrel91316]

4. Yeah, I felt like an architectural sleuth as I dug through the layers and

saw what had been done. And I admit to a little nervousness about possible asbestos, so I have been googling, but everything points to this all just being gypsum plasterboard and plaster.

But the whole "NO INSULATION" thing has me just shaking my head. It gets 119F here in the summer. Oy.

[eleny]

5. Asbestos crossed my mind, too

No matter what, it would be good to wear a mask. So much dust.

Our house is block construction. A family built the home for themselves. When we had a side by side pair of windows replaced with a bay, we found some interesting things stuffed down into the spaces of the cinder blocks - old newspapers and squashed tin cans along with assorted rubble. Insulation - 1948 style. :D

When we had the house sided back in '07 we had them put thin sheets of insulation on the house before the siding went up. It's made a big difference in our heating and cooling "footprint". We used to use three window air conditioners in summer for the whole house. Last summer we only installed two and left out the big one in the living room. And our gas and electric bills have even gone down more than I hoped.

[kestrel91316]

6. Fortunately, we have no lack of "dust" masks around here. I have a whole

box of "molded surgical masks" that are the same as the dust masks they sell at the hardware stores. I hate them, so for surgery I use the soft tie-on kind.

I definitely wore a mask yesterday. Kept me from coughing, but there is a very fine white dust EVERYWHERE this AM, lol.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the idea that I have had an uninsulated wall here for the entire 18 years I've had this place. The guy I bought from, who had remodeled it, told me it was "really well-insulated", and I figured that those hot walls I had to deal with in the summer were just my tough luck. The energy wasted all those years by extra AC needs (and heating in winter) almost makes me ill.

[eleny]

7. Well, you've taken the bull by the horns now

So, feel good about that. There's only so many hours in a day and work takes up a lot. We've done improvements as we could afford it and had the time. You're doing good!

[kestrel91316]

8. It was pretty warm this AM, and I could feel the heat coming through that

wall from the morning sun, and you can already tell the difference. The insulated parts (though they have no drywall yet) were normal to the touch (same temp as room air). The uninsulated parts were noticeably warm.

[eleny]

9. That's great! Now you know that doing more is worth every bit of work

Even if it drives your neighbor nuts at the idea of you with tools in hand. :D

[Kolesar]

10. USG sells joint compound that sands off into larger particles that drop instead of floating in air

The 5 gallon tub describes that the product is designed to reduce the amount of dust created by sanding. I have never used it. BTW, I loved your account of your project. Hope it turns out well.

[Warpy]

11. I stripped wallpaper and removed expansion joint strips

in a trailer some years ago, then taped and mudded the sheetrock. One thing I found that cut the dust considerably was a plastic grill cleaner and water. I did the rough sanding with that arrangement and only the finish sanding with sandpaper. It made a huge difference in the amount of dust I had to eat.

The only drywalling I'd need help with is muscling the sheets into place.

[Kolesar]

12. Taping compounds instruct users to remove excess material with a damp sponge and not to sand

They are motivated to tell the users how to avoid kicking up a lot of dust. That's a nice sentiment to keep the place clean and to keep the material out of our lungs. I have a hunch that they want to cover their liabilities.

On my last project, I noticed that all the errors and wavy bumps just disappeared after a coat of primer and a coat of flat paint. Don't sweat the workmanship! Leave more time in your life to blog!!

[NMDemDist2]

13. totally off topic

but we just did our living room WITHOUT stripping the vinyl wallpaper, and it's looking great.

thank heaven for the new primers available

:hi:

[Warpy]

14. My wallpaper was plastic coated.

They wanted to make sure the ugly would stay there forever.

[NMDemDist2]

15. speaking of ugly......

:evilgrin:

now that the building trades have tanked, have you found a contractor?

[Viva_La_Revolution]

16. Wet-sand the mud to cut down on the dust when drywalling...

just get a couple of those kitchen sponges with the scrubby side. dip into a bucket of water and squeeze out the extra. use the scrubby side (lightly) on the raw patches, then use the sponge side to finish smoothing. almost zero dust. :)

[kestrel91316]

17. Update:

Guy came a couple of days ago and finished the demolition part, ripping out all the remaining plaster on that wall in about half an hour, lol. Then over the past two days my trusty assistant and I, during slow times, have installed the R-13 fiberglass insulation. I had JUST exactly enough to do the job. So now it's all ready for the guy to come back later this week and do the drywall.

The hallway is NOTICEABLY cooler today. Wow. Whoever invented insulation was a frickin' genius.