Renovating an Old House With New Walls

New Drywall

• Not all old walls need to be replaced in order for you to breathe new life into the rooms of a home. Once you’ve stripped away the old drywall and exposed the old studs, you'll be better able to determine whether or not they are in good condition. If they are, install new drywall on top of the old wall studs and instantly transform an old wall into a new wall. From there, add paint, wallpaper, stucco, texture mud, wainscoting, wood paneling, tile or any other variety of wall coverings to suit your design needs.

Facades

• One way of adding a new wall to an existing home is to build a facade wall adjacent to the old wall. Do this without taking off the old drywall if you desire, although it’s a good idea to first remove it to make sure there isn’t any rot or mold going on behind the scenes. From there, simply mirror the existing wall. Add a header plate to the top of the wall, nail it to the joists, then add the footer and mount it to the floor joists. After that, add your vertical studs in the same placement as the existing studs from the old wall.

Replacing Studs

• Sometimes when you remove the existing drywall to expose the old walls you will find that the majority of the wall studs are in good condition but a few of them are not. Look for dry rot (dry, crumbling sections) and wet rot (soggy, wet sections). Remove bad wall studs and replace them with new ones. When putting them in place, cut them slightly longer than they need to be to fit into the vertical space, so that they require slight hammering to fit into the footer and header boards tightly. From there, toe-nail them or use screws to mount them to the header and footers.

Replacing Existing Walls

• If a majority of the wall studs on a wall are bad, you need to replace the entire wall. For load-bearing walls, this means contacting a structural engineer to help you determine proper bracing of the ceiling joists or second story while you build the new wall and maneuver it into place. Special joist jacks are sold which are large jacks similar to a car jack, placed periodically across a wall underneath a length of wood which then pushes the entire floor or roof above slightly upwards to remove the old wall and build a new framing wall to replace the old one.

Considerations

• When building a facade wall, you do not need to use 16 inch spacing on the studs. Instead, you can use 24 inch spacing between the vertical studs because the wall will not be bearing any actual weight of the roof or floor above, but rather serve as just a facade skeleton for the drywall. New walls to replace old walls, on the other hand, must follow the 16 inch rule for spacing. If you are also building in bookshelves, doors and windows for load-bearing walls, be sure to contact a structural engineer to guide you through the process. Facade walls do not require the advice of a professional engineer and you may build as you see fit in regards to windows, bookshelves and other niches.