Drywalling

What Is Drywalling?

To begin with, if they built your house in the last 50 years.

Therefore, there’s a very good chance that they covered all the walls and ceilings with drywall.

Also, Drywall is essentially the modern alternative to hand-applied wall plaster.

And has all but replaced plaster in new home construction.

When it’s time to choose a material to cover the framing on your interior walls and ceilings.

The low cost and relatively DIY-friendly installation of drywall make it hard to beat.

Manufactured

Drywall and plaster (and plaster of Paris) share the same key ingredient: gypsum.

Gypsum is a natural, nontoxic mineral.

It is mined in 85 countries around the world.

Its chemical makeup consists of calcium, sulfur bound to oxygen, and water.

Gypsum crystals are ground into a fine, white powder.

Then this binds into a solid mass when mixed with water.

Besides mined gypsum.

They can make drywall from “synthetic” gypsum derived from flue-gas desulfurization (FGD).

Cleaning smokestacks in coal-burning power plants.

Tapered edges of drywall panels

A drywall panel comprises a gypsum core wrapped in several layers of paper (typically recycled paper).

During manufacturing, they pour a slurry of dense liquid gypsum onto continuous sheets of paper.

This is followed by a center layer of aerated gypsum.

And topped with another dense layer of gypsum before they sandwich more paper on top.

They extrude the sheets for a uniform thickness and to create a taper along the long edges.

It cuts short edges to create the various lengths of panels.

The face paper is usually white

Back paper is usually a light brown, similar to butcher paper.

A Brief History of Drywall

Lastly: Originally knew drywall as Sackett Board, after its inventor, Augustine Sackett.

It was patented in 1894 and was intended as a labor-saving substitute for traditional plaster.

In 1909, the US Gypsum Company (USG bought Sackett’s invention).

Which remains North America’s largest producer of drywall panels today.

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