1/27/2024 0 Comments Horse hair in walls![]() In overhead installations, gravity plays a much bigger role, compared to plaster used on walls.Įven if your home is from the correct era for plaster, a previous owner may have ripped out the lathe and plaster walls in a room, or a ceiling, or the whole house. Craftsmen sometimes doubled the lathes for ceilings. Plaster ceilings use thicker lathes (when wooden lathes are used) to help support the weight of the plaster. The metal mesh allowed plaster to “curve” and create rounded surfaces, rather than the typically straight walls of the wooden lathe method.Įven later, a blue-board backing was used (similar to “drywall,” the slang term for sheet-rock or gypsum wall board) which would pull the water out of the plaster very slowly, allowing it to dry without cracking.Īlthough drywall can be used as a base surface for plaster walls, to achieve a good result, it’s essential to use a solution to deter the drywall from pulling water from the plaster too quickly. Later, metal mesh was used as the backing material for plaster. ![]() This created an anchor to hold the plaster securely in place, on the other side of the slats. When plaster was pushed through the slats during application with a trowel, it mushroomed out wider than the space between the slats, and dried. Early backings were made of wooden slats, nailed to the wall studs, with a space left between each slat for the plaster to seep in and “grab,” holding the plaster on the wall. Plaster, which is similar to concrete, is traditionally made with a mixture of sand, lime, water, and horse hair, and was applied with a trowel to a lathe backing. ![]() Heating and cooling a house will cause plaster to expand and shrink slightly, so the hair helped keep the walls a bit more flexible. These walls are sometimes called “horse-hair plaster” because it was common to mix horse hair into the wet plaster to add strength, and to prevent cracking with minor flexing. Until the late-1950s, plaster walls were the norm in new home construction.
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