Whats the best way to remove plaster walls?

I'm working on a renovation project at my house to add a couple bathrooms. Im about to start on gutting a room down to the studs. It has plaster and lath walls. Im sure i can get it torn down, but i want to know from the our resident pros in the construction industry, what is the best and most efficient way to remove it and get it out the window loaded in the truck? I have normal guy tools, if there is specialty tools that are a must have let me know and i will see about renting them. Also there is a E36 M3load of blown in insulation behind that plaster, so any tips for easier cleanup of that is appreciated also. Thanks.

I've removed a large house's worth of plaster and lath with a good ol' crowbar. Poke a hole, get between the lath and the stud and pull it loose. Comes off better than drywall. You'd spend more time getting the specialty tools than you'd save, if there were any.

I seem to recall cleanup involving shovels.

It's going to be a dusty bitch.  You might can cut the walls into manageable pieces with a reciprocating saw, but most people just demo it with hammers and prybars.     

I did a kitchen renovation where I replaced the plaster walls while trying to save the plaster ceiling. The corners had expanded steel reinforcement. Sawzall blades lasted about six inches. I had to use a fire ax to cut the corners of the ceiling. If I were doing it again, I’d tear it all out. 

I also used a crow bar. If you have one, a plastic snow shovel helps for cleanup. Cover everything you’re keeping in heavy plastic to protect it from debris and dust. 

We used to hang wet sheets in the doorway to trap the dust. Works pretty well.

My parents bought an old pile of a house when I was 7. We renovated it around us for the next decade. The smell of plasterdust is the smell of my childhood I would happily help someone tear down a lath wall again.

If those house flipping shows are the standard, you and your girlfriend should smash the hell out of it with sledgehammers while wearing loafers and sandals. Make sure to have Mexican laborers off camera to clean up your mess.

Been there, done that many times.  For tear-down, you want a serious demolition crow bar.  I love the ones with the jaws that allow you to grab onto the lathe and pull.  

Heavy-duty contractor bags are your friends, along with an aluminum scoop shovel to fill them up.  

If you can park a dumpster under the window, you can shovel right into that, but remember the dust issue.  Anything higher than a few feet will need a chute.  I used the cardboard tube that is made for concrete forms because it is cheap and long. 

As mentioned - crow bar.  I've also seen it attached to metal lath in a bathroom where it overlapped tile. For that a crowbar simply wasn't enough and I used a chisel bit on a SDS hammer-drill in hammer-only mode.  Fun times.

One word of caution - if you are only demolishing one side of an interior wall at a time, but careful with your enthusiasm. Too much and you can accidentally bring down the plaster on the other side or break the plaster bond to the lath. (speaking from unfortunate experience)

If it's a really old house, you may find bricks between the studs on exterior walls. This can add an additional level of annoyance as the base plaster layer may be bonded to the bricks/mortar. (again - BTDT)

Wear a dust mask and a hat.  I second the comment about a snow/coal shovel for removal.  Plan on a dumpster or Bagster. You'll probably have much more debris than you thought you would.

I'm in the process of renovating a bathroom and faced a similar decision during the demo phase.

Initially I did the hammer and crowbar method, but that was messy, pieces tendieg to be small chunks rather than sheets, and cleanup was a pain.

The most efficient method I found was to open the wall using a hammer and crowbar enough to see where plumbing and wiring were run, and then use a sawzall with a demolition blade. I cut along the studs to create 14" wide strips that could easily be snapped into smaller squares to make them easy to stack, carry, and dispose of compared to shoveling or using trash bags.  

Once all the plaster was removed between the studs, I used a combination of hammer and crowbar, BFH, and/or sawzall to remove the framing. The method depended on whether I was trying to salvage adjacent walls or avoid damage to plumbing and electrical.

jstand, sounds like you're pulling down drywall. It's a different beast than plaster and lath.

When I was a kid, we didn't have them fancy crowbars.

Appleseed said:

If those house flipping shows are the standard, you and your girlfriend should smash the hell out of it with sledgehammers while wearing loafers and sandals. Make sure to have Mexican laborers off camera to clean up your mess.

Those shows drive me nuts. What a waste of effort!

In reply to Keith Tanner :

No, it was definitely plaster. and didn't like to come off in anything other that small chunks when using the hammer and crowbar method./

But being from the 50's, the build up was 12"x 8'(?) x 3/8" plaster board run horizontally, then the three layer plaster build up to get to a total thickness of approx 3/4". It included the expanded metal reinforcement int he corners as well.

When I cut out the plaster, I left the strips that were still on the studs if the framing was being replaced. I only cleaned the remaining plaster and nails from the framing that was being reused.

I would think that even with plaster and lathe build up. if you can cut out the portion between the framing, then it is easier to get the crow bar between the framing and plaster to clean them off.

All of my experience is with horsehair plaster in a house from about 100 years ago. Peel that lath back and you take off big, robust chunks at a time. I never used a hammer.

Keith Tanner said:

Appleseed said:

If those house flipping shows are the standard, you and your girlfriend should smash the hell out of it with sledgehammers while wearing loafers and sandals. Make sure to have Mexican laborers off camera to clean up your mess.

Those shows drive me nuts. What a waste of effort!

Dont get me started. That and the fact that he has some stupid job nobody has ever heard of and she stays home with their one adopted asian kid and their budget is like $14 million.

Keith Tanner said:

All of my experience is with horsehair plaster in a house from about 100 years ago. Peel that lath back and you take off big, robust chunks at a time. Just don't bust up the lath. I never used a hammer.

This is what im working with. What do you mean by "peel that lath back"? What is the process? 

Last time I did this there was a cooler full of beer in the center of the room a large crowbar, a shovel and a pail. Pretty sure there should have been some other items, but beer and plaster ran out at about the same time, so all good.

after the lath was down, there was some quality time with a nail puller.

Also learned that the framing under plaster walls is not suitable for drywall.

Pete

jstand said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

But being from the 50's, the build up was 12"x 8'(?) x 3/8" plaster board run horizontally, then the three layer plaster build up to get to a total thickness of approx 3/4". It included the expanded metal reinforcement int he corners as well.

Keith, the system he's describing is sheetrock, not drywall.  It's the intermediate step between lath-and-plaster like you're describing and modern drywall.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

You mean a goldfish trainer and his wife, an oboe restorer couldn’t realistically renovate a house in two weekends with a budget of only $575,000

"Also learned that the framing under plaster walls is not suitable for drywall."

THIS.  We bought a 150 year old pile of a house, which is partially drywall over log cabin, and partially plaster.  Most of the studs are hardwood and not any particular size.  It really is like they chopped down whatever trees were there and made boards whatever size the trees were.  Did I mention some of the boards have branches still sticking out of them?

I have a 3' long yellow demolition bar.  it was well used.  I nicknamed it "The Big Ole Bust-It-Up Bar".  Many nails would break off when I tried to extract them.  So I cut them off with an angle grinder.  

It is an exercise in futility putting drywall on studs where plaster had been.  Sister some 2x4's onto the existing studs, and attach the drywall to those.  if your existing studs are further apart than 16" on center, then add in some studs between them.  A lot of the older homes were built 24" on center.  That's too far for drywall for it to be stable and solid-feeling.  

If the studs are hardwood like ours are, you'll be predrilling and screwing to get those 2x4's sistered on.  Even my professional nail gun wouldn't touch them.  

The plaster has to go to the dump, unfortunately, but the lath strips, if you save them into long enough pieces, can be useful.  We have used them to build garden trellises and other crafty stuff.  Even the scrap bits that were too short to do anything useful with were good- as kindling.  

If a nail breaks off, just hit it with a hammer and drive it into the wood :)

I'd never known there was a distinction between sheetrock and drywall. I have learned something new today! I know that the framing under our old plaster lath walls was good enough for drywall, so that may vary. "drywall over log cabin" is my new favorite construction technique descriptor.

gearheadmb, get the prybar between the lath (horizontal strips) and the stud (vertical). Pull it off. That's it. You'll have to smash your way through the plaster to get there, so you get one reality TV-style hammer blow at least. You're basically just pulling nails. You can see the nails in that picture.

If you snap the lath between studs, you'll end up with more pieces to deal with later on the ground so it's a bit of a hassle, but really it's not that big a deal if you do.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Well, that's speaking technically.  In semi-common usage, sheetrock is used as a synonym for drywall fairly frequently.

VIOLENCE

In reply to Duke :

I'd say its more of a step between lath-and-plaster and modern plaster veneer over blue board, if we're being technical.

What I have replaces the lath with the plaster board, but still uses a more traditional plaster build up of scratch coat, brown coat, finish coat to get the desired thickness and finish.

Modern plaster veneer over blue board skips the scratch coat and brown coats, and just uses a finish coat over the whole surface.

I replaced the interior framing (it was 2x3) with new 2x4 framing, rather than padding them out, and will end up with plaster veneer over blue board for the ceiling and any parts of walls that aren't tiled. 

Sheetrock is a trademarked brand name, like Kleenex. It's owned by US Gypsum.

Drywall is the correct name for the product. 

The gypsum sheet products used under plaster for a short time (in the '50's and '60's) is called Gyp Lath. They were thicker than modern materials, and did not come in 4' wide sheets. They were more like 2' wide sheets. They served as BOTH the lathing, AND the plaster brown coat (the thick base coat of plaster). Plasterers only applied a finish coat of plaster to the Gyp Lath.

The company Sheetrock actually started making Gyp Lath, and so Gyp Lath was often called Sheetrock (like facial tissues are called Kleenex). As plaster Gyp Lath was phased out and Drywall became the industry standard (and manufacturing processes for drywall became higher quality and more uniform), other companies entered the drywall business, Sheetrock tried to distance itself from being identified with the product. 

So, drywall is the right term. But everybody calls it Sheetrock!