Profile of Washington DC and Northern Virginia’s Most Popular Interior Building Material
Once upon a time, the building materials used to cover the inside surfaces of residential homes were the same as those used on the outside: wood, stone, and brick masonry. Construction was not yet sophisticated enough for builders to think about the differing demands of an interior versus an exterior surface.
As technology progressed, techniques were developed to create a smooth, even interior finish using plaster and stucco. Once dry, the plaster would create an ideal surface for interior purposes, such as decoration and sealing against the elements battering against the exterior. Stuccoing an interior involves applying wet plaster against a framework (often made of some sort of mesh) in successive layers.
While plaster and stucco create a strong, beautiful interior finish, they also posed some problems – especially for the wanna-be remodeler. Successful installation of plaster interior surfaces requires care, but is not prohibitively difficult – but changing or replacing any part of those surfaces, once fully dried, can be a nightmare. If part of a plaster wall gathers moisture and rots, or if a wall needs to be changed or an electrical or pumping system behind the wall needs to be operated on, ripping out and replacing a limited section of the wall is a huge hassle. Upon reflection on this difficulty, the call went out to the architectural engineers to come up with a building material that would serve the same purpose as plaster – creating a smooth, even finish – but would be cheaper and easier to manipulate all throughout its lifespan.
The answer that they came up with is named, in contrast to its moist cousins, “drywall”. Drywall is constructed by sandwiching a layer of gypsum in between two sturdy sheets of paper – helpfully dubbed the “face paper” and the “back paper”. The face paper and the back paper are carefully composed mixtures of pulp and chemicals designed to perform the tasks you would want for the outside and inside of your interior walls, respectively. The face paper is often treated with fire resistant, mold resistant, and coating-friendly chemicals, while the back paper is treated with chemicals that give it extra moisture and mold resistance, static dispersal, and physical flexibility to withstand the expansion and contraction of changing temperatures. The gypsum core in the middle gives the drywall its strength, so that it can keep its shape while being mounted vertically or horizontally on wooden studs and joists.
The greatest benefit of drywall is its maneuverability. If a section of a wall gets mold or water damage, or becomes soiled from years of domestic use, it is easy and straightforward to remove the damaged section, replace it with a new piece, and re-coat the surface to look like an unbroken whole. If you want to hang a new wall to divide a room into sections, or you want to rip down part of an existing wall, adding and removing drywall is a manageable process. All in all, handling and making changes with drywall is a remodelers dream; like the adult’s version of building with legos.
So if you have any changes you want to make in your home – sections of wall to be replaced, or changes you want to your interior layout – and the building material used to establish your interior is drywall, you are in luck. You can follow the simple steps in our Drywall How-To blog to manipulate your drywall yourself, or you can call Blue Door Painters now to take advantage of Washington DC and Northern Virginia’s premiere drywall repair and installation services.