DIY Tips: #7 How to fix into different wall types

DIY Tips: #7 How to fix into different wall types


Houses around Reading will have many variations of wall, from plastered brick and mortar, stud walling with lath and plaster or plasterboard. Fixing into  some types of wall presents us “DiYers” with an interesting set of problems (or an interesting set of potential solutions if you're a budding Psychologist)

Ideally you will need:
A stud locator – seriously – this will help locate the studding in partition or stud-walling
Bradawl
Electric or Hand Drill
Computer controlled robotic arm (to hold your pencil)
A screw driver or driver bit drill attachment
Suitable screws 
 
Strong fixings into plain brick/render/plaster walls is easily made with “rawl” type plugs and screws as we have already discovered in [DiY Tasks #5 & #6]

However fixing into a wall becomes more interesting when you have lath & plaster. Lath & Plaster is made from a wooden framework of “studs” and a lattice of thin strips of wood (laths) fixed to the studs and then plaster over the top – the wet plaster oozes through the gaps in the laths to make a good bond.

You'll be able to tell if you have a lath & plaster wall in your 'turn-of-the-century terrace' by either tapping on the wall in different places and getting a 'hollow' sound or by the fact that when you drill into it, your drill just keeps disappearing without seeming to have the normal resistance when drilling into, for example, a brick wall. 

If you have a teenager they may even have already resolved this question for you by kicking the wall in teenage angst ridden anger or by idly poking around in some un-repaired hole, exposing a cavernous space behind (the devil makes work for idle hands, as my old nan used to say). This is supposed to be a DiY column so I'm not going to get into the massive and protracted debate as to why teenagers do what they do or why some teenagers do and others don't – suffice to say – if you have one, good luck. 

These lath & plaster stud walls will normally only be found on 'internal' walls between rooms, hallways or stairs. If you find you have lath & plaster for an outside wall, I strongly suggest you're either living in a hippy commune and you need to “let go man” and leave the 70's behind, or you really must call in a building inspector to look at your house.

You'll find it virtually impossible to make a firm fixing into lath & plaster – unless you stick huge bolts right through both sides of the wall and brace it with steel shackles and plates of course – or you could put your screws into the wooden studs which run floor to ceiling at around 14” intervals for the length of the wall (this can and does vary up to around 16”). 

Find the studs, either with your handy (cost a few bob from any decent DiY shop) or by simply tapping on the wall in various places. You'll know the stud when your knock sounds kind of, 'not hollow'. Or, you could use a bradawl to poke through the laths in different places until you meet resistance - but then of course you'll have to fill all those little holes with filler and sand them and paint and it all gets very messy just for putting up a shelf. Mark the position of the studs across your wall with a feint pencil mark. See the picture at the top.

Fixing into a more modern stud wall with plasterboard is much the same – don't try to fix anything other than “blu-tak” onto the plasterboard – instead fix through that and into the studs. Again, see the picture above.

The main thinking behind finding the studs in this type of walling is that we need to fix our bracket or what-have-you into the stud rather than the hollow lath & plaster part of the wall.


Do let me know if you'd like me to suggest places to purchase tools and hardware needed for these DiY tasks and I'll see what I can do.

Also see 
http://www.getreading.co.uk/blogs/andanotherthing/s/2116600_diy_dave_fixing_into_lath_and_plaster_walls


Keep safe
Dave