Hi,

I have an old 20's cottage with the front half of the internal walls and ceilings for 2 rooms and hallway being fibro, each panel is joined by a cover strip every 1.2m (strip is wood 65mmx8mm), plus skirting and picture rail.

To (hopefully) improve insulation and wanting to cover over the highly likey asbestos, I would like to plaster/gyprock over this.

- Can I glue the plaster board onto the walls using the coverstrips as battens with the above distance between each strip, or would I need to glue more battens to the wall?

- can i glue only, or do I need to nail aswell (walls and ceiling)?

- As I want minimise disturbing any asbestos, I dont want to remove the skirting and existing picture rails, so i think I have to stick plaster board as close as possible to surrounding skirting and picture rails and then install new ones over the existing (to try and keep that look), has anyone done similar?

- Can I glue over the existing paint on the wall or do I have to cut back to bear wood on the strips (only reason i ask is i would prefer not to to not disturb any asbestos - repeating myself ,..i know)

- thats all i can think of...

any help or advice really appreciated, first time i've tried plastering,

oh, one other thing, i've been told that joining is the hardest bit to keep a smooth surface, just practice i guess?

Thanks,

D

G'day, you can't really have a half decent job without stripping back to some degree. You could screw through the fibro into th studs but not glue to it. You would need to take off the cover strips and the skirting. If you wre happy to lose room space the use Rondo channels #129 on clips screwed to the studs.

CHeers
Pulse

Just remove the strips and screw plasterboard sheets over the fibro. No need for the battens. Glue will not help as you will only be glueing to the fibro sheets that are not glued.

Screw the sheets every 400mm down the stud when you are not using glue (walls) and 300mm (ceilings).

See tips on jointing on my web site they will help.

Cheers Rod

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Is it possible to leave the strips there and just use longer screws that go through the strip and then into the stud? The only extra piece that I imagine I'll need to do is add extra strips over each stud (same thickness as existing strips) to keep it level?

Personally, I'd just remove the fibro. If you follow the basic safety precautions (wear disposable coveralls and disposable P2 masks) then it is perfectly safe to do so. Just lay two layers of black builders plastic on the floor of the room, remove sheets from the wall, lay down as many sheets as a pair of you can carry (about four sheets) and wrap them in the builders plastic. Seal your parcel with duct tape and take the parcel out to your hired ute or trailer. Repeat until rooms are stripped. Take parcels to licenced tip (you may need to let them know you're coming).

Alternatively you can hire a asbestos approved skip bin instead of the ute and you'll probably pay about $300 to $400 plus tip fees (my local charges about $70 per tonne for asbestos)....

http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/wa...stos/index.htm

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Ours is not to reason why.....only to point and giggle.

If you do leave the masonite your idea with the strips will work fine, just more work.

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thanks for the advice, is there a special drill to use for screwing, I saw this on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/DRYWALL-SCREW...QQcmdZViewItem

or will my normal cordless drill do the job?

will my standard cordless drill do the job or should I go for this one on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/DRYWALL-SCREW...QQcmdZViewItem

can i use my cordless drill for fixing the plaster or should i use one of these:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/DRYWALL-SCREW...QQcmdZViewItem