When renovating a house, should we knock down the concrete walls (and reframe), or just sheetrock over them?
Sunday, June 27th, 2010 at
11:43 am
Our entire house is poured concrete. We are about going to do major renovations, both inside and out. If we are happy with where the walls are should we just sheetrock (or drywall) over them? Or knock them all down and frame them out again with drywall? Thanks for your help.
Passive Income
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Tagged with: Concrete Walls • Reframe • Renovating A House • Thanks For Your Help
Filed under: property renovation
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The answer is, as always, it depends. Mostly it depends on what type of fisnish you want on the walls both inside and outside. The materials for finishing walls today are directly derived from the fact that most houses are built from lumber which can easily accept nails and screws. The same cannot be said for concrete. If your concrete walls are nice and smooth, you may just want to paint them or apply a decorative coating right on top of them. For example venetian plaster on the inside, and stucco on the outside.
If you want the smoothness of drywall, then you will either have to consider that some sort of framing needs to be in place for you to hang the drywall. This is where decision time occurs. If you frame with steel studs (which are thinner) without removing the concrete walls, you will lose about 5-6 inches in both dimension of the room. For example, if a room is 10×10 feet currently, adding framing and drywall in front of the concrete will reduce the room to about 9′6″ x 9′6″.
Knocking down the concrete walls sound extreme but you may have no choice if the solutions above are not to your satisfaction. Note that I am not a concrete expert, but it seems to me that knocking down one wall will affect the walls beside as they should be linked with steel rebar for mutual support. It also raises questions about what you will do with your roof. If it was up to me, I would choose a solution that keeps the concrete walls in place,
Alvorens u om het even welke muren neerhaalt, zou u een deskundige moeten raadplegen.
U zult zeker willen zijn dat het verwijderen van een muur niet de volledige structuur onstabiel zal verlaten.
Enkele binnenlandse muren kunnen load-bearing muren zijn.
Als in feite, u met de binnenlandse muurplaatsen toen gelukkig bent zou een eenvoudige en veilige oplossing aan sheetrock over hen zijn.
Als er een kans van vochtigheid die door de cementmuren toen komt is gebruik een blad van plastiek tegen het beton alvorens u 2×4' installeert; s.