a sheetrock question

Frank Fusco

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Mountain Home, Arkansas
When I was young....a long-long time ago.....I recall there were two different kinds of interior wall material.
One was drywall.
The other was called sheetrock. It was unlike drywall in that it was thinner and was a solid material rather than compacted. It really resembled a sheet of rock.
I don't know why one would be used in one application over the other. I do recall it was hard to work with and, as a skinny little kid, I couldn't lift a sheet alone.
Is what I remember as 'sheetrock' still used? Or is drywall now sometimes referred to as sheetrock?
 
When I was young....a long-long time ago.....I recall there were two different kinds of interior wall material.
One was drywall.
The other was called sheetrock. It was unlike drywall in that it was thinner and was a solid material rather than compacted. It really resembled a sheet of rock.
I don't know why one would be used in one application over the other. I do recall it was hard to work with and, as a skinny little kid, I couldn't lift a sheet alone.
Is what I remember as 'sheetrock' still used? Or is drywall now sometimes referred to as sheetrock?

I've always heard sheetrock referred to as drywall myself. I did drywall for about 6 years professionally, but didn't use much of anything else. Was it more like the concrete backer board that is being used? What was the texture like? Smooth or rough? I know before my time that they had other types of backers for plaster that replaced the laths.
 
I've always heard sheetrock referred to as drywall myself. I did drywall for about 6 years professionally, but didn't use much of anything else. Was it more like the concrete backer board that is being used? What was the texture like? Smooth or rough? I know before my time that they had other types of backers for plaster that replaced the laths.

It was (is?) smooth and thinner than most drywalls.
I don't know what the concrete backer board is.
 
What a fantastic question. I've always used the two interchangeably.

Apparently, after a quick search, Sheetrock is a trademark of USG. So I suppose sheetrock = drywall these days.
 
We had a material that would resemble that,it was asbestos mixed with concrete and compressed into sheets of about different thicknesses.

That same material was used for making sewage pipes and ondulate sheets for roofing.

When asbestos was found to be hazardous and banned they stopped producing it.

Now when renewing a building that has that material specialized companies have to take care of the removal of it.

Its brand name was Uralita
 
May have been meant to go over wood laths to patch plaster to match to the 3/4" depth, but used it as the main wallboard instead. I've read on a couple of sites about the type you are describing, seemed to be common in the 50's. Hard telling though, USG has been making sheetrock for a long time, patents back to 1912.

http://preservationinpink.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/img_09722.jpg

My reccolection is use on new construction. And, yes, this was back in the 50's.
Later post, Toni may be right about it being asbetos. Dunno. :dunno:
 
My reccolection is use on new construction. And, yes, this was back in the 50's.
Later post, Toni may be right about it being asbetos. Dunno. :dunno:

If I remember right, asbestos was used in drywall to strengthen it all the way up to about 1980, so there's a potential that even housed built up to then may have it in the drywall.
 
There was also one that I recall from the 50's and early 60's that we called plasterboard. It was different in both size and the paper texture. The stuff was delivered in a bundle, 4 ft long and 16" wide, 6 to a bundle. It really was intended to plaster on. The paper was a great deal rougher than sheetrock. I haven't seen it for 50 years or so (can't even believe I'm old enough to say that I remember something 50 years ago:()
 
There was also one that I recall from the 50's and early 60's that we called plasterboard. It was different in both size and the paper texture. The stuff was delivered in a bundle, 4 ft long and 16" wide, 6 to a bundle. It really was intended to plaster on. The paper was a great deal rougher than sheetrock. I haven't seen it for 50 years or so (can't even believe I'm old enough to say that I remember something 50 years ago:()

The sheetrock I recall did not have paper, plain 'rock'.
 
There was also one that I recall from the 50's and early 60's that we called plasterboard. It was different in both size and the paper texture. The stuff was delivered in a bundle, 4 ft long and 16" wide, 6 to a bundle. It really was intended to plaster on. The paper was a great deal rougher than sheetrock. I haven't seen it for 50 years or so (can't even believe I'm old enough to say that I remember something 50 years ago:()

This is the stuff the walls in my house are made of. Here in Boston I've heard it referred to as "rocklathe and plaster" walls.

A few years ago, I opened up one of these walls to access the knee wall space behind it for storage -- talk about a solidly made wall :bang:
 
bruce it was called rock lath,, and was also used as cheaper backing for the new thinner paneling that was the rage then..but its main use was for plaster rather than the lath of older methods, they would also put a wire mess over it to grip the brown coat of a plastered wall.
 
I ran into the stuff Frank speaks of during a refurb of a house long, long ago. Terrible stuff to work with. We finally gave up and laid drywall over the existing walls to resolve the issue.
 
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