Glendale Quality Drywall Over Plaster Installation

Glendale Quality Drywall installs, tapes and finishes drywall over plaster for homeowners and builders across Glendale, CA, and handles full plaster removal when a wall or ceiling doesn’t qualify for an overlay. Glendale Quality Drywall works the older hillside blocks with original lath and plaster construction as well as the flats, where additions and remodels have mixed plaster and drywall on the same job. We tell you which approach fits your walls before we quote anything.

Drywall Over Plaster vs. Full Plaster Removal

Drywall lamination overlay — screwing gypsum board straight over existing plaster — works when the plaster is sound, reasonably flat, and you’re not opening the wall for electrical or plumbing. It’s faster, produces less dust, and skips the demo dumpster. Plaster removal vs covering becomes the obvious call once we find soft spots, active leaks, or lath pulled away from studs in more than a few spots.

Overlay work is mostly labor for hanging, taping, and finishing, plus furring strips and screws, with no debris hauling. Full removal adds demo labor, disposal fees for lath and horsehair plaster, and rebuilding from bare studs. Overlay costs scale more with finish level and how much prep the walls need.

Furring Strips, Fastening, and Drywall Thickness Options

Furring strips for plaster walls give you a flat, predictable fastening surface over wavy plaster. We shim and screw wood strips at 16-inch centers, checking with a straightedge, then hang gypsum board to the strips instead of straight to the plaster.

Drywall thickness options matter: 1/4 inch works over flat, stable plaster where you’re just skinning a surface; 1/2 inch or 5/8 inch adds strength and better sound and fire performance where the plaster has more irregularity or code requires it. Ceiling height considerations come into play too — furring plus board can eat close to an inch of headroom, which matters in rooms already near minimum code height, so we sometimes use thinner board or skip furring on ceilings and screw straight to sound joists instead.

Drywall fastening methods call for screws long enough to clear the drywall, the old plaster, and bite solid framing or furring. Screw spacing for drywall runs 16 inches on center along walls and tighter, closer to 12 inches, on ceilings where sag risk is higher. We seat screws just below the paper without blowing through, and pre-drill where old plaster is too hard for a clean set.

Door Jambs, Window Jambs, and Outlet Repositioning

Room dimension reduction from an overlay is usually a half inch to five-eighths per wall. Door jamb extension and window jamb adjustment strips get added so casing sits flush again, and we shim out stops rather than forcing old trim to reach a wall that’s moved. Trim alignment issues show up most where new drywall butts old plaster returns — we run corner bead at outside corners and feather joint compound wide so the transition doesn’t read as two materials once painted.

Adding drywall over plaster also changes wall depth, so outlet repositioning and switch boxes need box extenders to reach the new surface. Where we’re fishing wire through existing plaster and lath, we cut minimal access and patch after, keeping everything to current code.

Assessing and Repairing Plaster Before Covering

Plaster wall preparation starts with cleaning off loose paint, wallpaper paste, and dust so screws bite into something solid. We tap walls listening for lath and plaster separation, run a level to map wavy wall solutions, and check for plaster crack repair candidates versus structural cracking before ordering material. Water staining, chalky residue, and bounce when you press on the wall point toward deterioration that changes the plan.

Loose plaster over separated lath needs attention before covering, not after. We secure it from the face side with plaster washers driven into lath and framing, or cut out bad sections and patch with a scratch coat. Plaster ceiling repair for sagging areas works the same way, with added bracing where sag runs across a wide span rather than a localized spot. For plaster that’s rough but sound, we skim coat with joint compound or hot mud in thin passes to level minor waves before the overlay goes on.

Water Damaged Ceilings and Joint Finishing

Water damaged ceiling repair on older Glendale properties often traces back to flat-roof leaks, old plumbing, or radiator-era staining that dried out but left the plaster brittle. We dry the area fully, confirm no active source remains, and stabilize with scratch coat or replacement lath before any drywall patching and finishing goes over it.

Joint finishing techniques matter most where new board meets old plaster: paper tape embedded in compound, feathered wide across three coats, with texture matched so it blends. A Level 5 finish in high-visibility areas keeps flat light from showing the joint.

A single bedroom overlay usually runs a few days from prep through finish; a whole floor stretches to a couple weeks with drying time between coats. We phase rooms so you keep at least one bathroom and a working kitchen throughout, sealing work areas with plastic and running negative air where dust control matters most.