Walk into any house built before the 1940s and you’ll feel it. The walls are colder. They’re thicker. If you knock on them, they don’t have that hollow, papery thud of modern suburban construction. Instead, there’s a dense, stony resistance. Most people just call these "old house walls," but what was used before drywall was a craft that’s basically a lost art today: lath and plaster.
It was messy. It was heavy. Honestly, it was a literal pain in the neck for the folks installing it. But for hundreds of years, it was the gold standard.
If you're living in a home built in the late 1800s or early 1900s, you aren't just surrounded by wood and paint. You’re living inside a hand-sculpted shell of rock and hair. Literally.
The Anatomy of a Pre-Drywall Wall
Before we had 4x8 sheets of gypsum board delivered by the truckload, builders had to create a wall from scratch, layer by layer. It started with lath. These were thin, narrow strips of wood—usually cedar or pine—nailed horizontally across the wall studs.
They weren't shoved tight together. That’s the secret.
Carpenters left a gap about the width of a finger between each strip. This gap allowed the plasterer to perform a bit of "construction magic" called the key. When the wet plaster was pressed against the wood strips, it would ooze through the gaps and slump down behind the wood. Once that glob of plaster hardened, it hooked the entire wall surface to the frame. Without those "keys," the wall would just peel off and fall over the second someone slammed a door.
It’s actually kinda brilliant.
The Three-Coat Nightmare
While drywall is a "score, snap, and screw" situation, what was used before drywall required three distinct stages of labor. You had the scratch coat, which was the first layer pushed into the lath. It was coarse, gritty, and usually full of sand. Then came the brown coat, which leveled everything out and created a flat plane. Finally, the finish coat—a thin, smooth veneer of lime and plaster of Paris—gave the wall its glass-like feel.
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Wait, I mentioned hair earlier. I wasn't kidding.
Because plaster is naturally brittle, old-school builders needed a binding agent to keep it from cracking under the house's natural settling. Their solution? Horsehair. Or ox hair. Sometimes pig hair. They would mix bundles of animal fur into the wet scratch coat. It acted like rebar in concrete. If you ever renovate an old Victorian and see weird, fibrous strands sticking out of a broken chunk of wall, don't panic. It's just 120-year-old cow hair doing its job.
Why Did We Stop Using Lath and Plaster?
The short answer is World War I.
Drywall—or "Sackett Board" as it was originally known after its inventor Augustine Sackett—actually existed in the late 1800s. But nobody wanted it. It was seen as cheap, flimsy, and "temporary." Real homeowners wanted the acoustic mass of plaster.
Then the labor shortage hit.
Plastering is an elite skill. It takes years to learn how to hawk and trowel a ceiling so it doesn't look like the surface of the moon. During the war years and the subsequent building booms, we simply didn't have enough master plasterers to keep up with the demand for housing. Drywall allowed "unskilled" labor to close up a room in a day. A plaster room took weeks because you had to let each coat dry before applying the next.
Time is money. Drywall won.
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The Materials Nobody Talks About: Beyond the Lath
While lath and plaster dominated the "nice" homes, what was used before drywall in more industrial or budget-friendly contexts varied quite a bit.
- Beadboard: You’ve seen this in kitchens and mudrooms. It’s those vertical wooden planks with the little decorative ridges. In many 19th-century homes, beadboard was the actual wall, not just a decorative accent. It was durable as hell and could handle the moisture that would make plaster crumble.
- Plasterboard (The Middle Child): Before modern drywall, there was a hybrid. Imagine small, thick tiles of compressed gypsum that were nailed to the studs, which then received a thin coat of plaster over the top. It eliminated the need for wood lath but kept the "hard" finish of traditional plaster.
- Adobe and Stone: In the Southwest or in very early colonial structures, walls were often just the structural material itself, smoothed over with a lime wash. No cavity, no insulation, just mass.
Is Old Plaster Actually Better Than Drywall?
Honestly? Yes and no.
If you’ve ever tried to get a Wi-Fi signal through three rooms of a 1920s bungalow, you know the struggle. Those walls are dense. They often contain metal mesh (which replaced wood lath in the early 20th century), which basically turns your house into a giant Faraday cage. It kills your signal.
But, man, the quiet.
Plaster is much better at sound dampening than drywall. You can have a full-blown dinner party in the kitchen and barely hear a peep in the bedroom. It’s also naturally fire-resistant. Because plaster is basically a thin layer of rock, it takes a long time for a flame to eat through it compared to the paper-backed gypsum of modern drywall.
However, when it fails, it fails hard.
When a house settles or moisture gets behind the lath, those "keys" I mentioned earlier start to snap. Once the keys go, the plaster pulls away from the wood. This is why you see those long, jagged cracks in old ceilings. Eventually, gravity wins, and a fifty-pound chunk of ceiling lands on your coffee table. Repairing that isn't as simple as a bit of Spackle; it requires specific adhesives or a complete tear-out.
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Practical Insights for Living with Pre-Drywall Walls
If you own a home with these historic surfaces, stop treating them like drywall. You can't just shove a plastic anchor into a plaster wall and expect it to hold a heavy mirror. You'll likely just shatter the plaster or hit a piece of wood lath that will split.
The Pro Move for Hanging Art: Always pre-drill. Use a masonry bit for the plaster layer and then a wood bit if you hit the lath. Better yet, find the actual studs. In old homes, stud spacing can be "creative"—it’s not always 16 inches on center. Use a high-quality magnet to find the nails in the lath; that’ll tell you where the vertical timber is hiding.
Dealing with Cracks: Don't just fill them with joint compound. It'll shrink and the crack will reappear in six months. Use a "plaster washer"—a little metal perforated disc—to screw the sagging plaster back into the wood lath, then skim coat over it. It’s the only way to actually stabilize the wall.
Identifying Your Wall Type: Unsure what you have? Take off a switch plate (after turning off the power, obviously). Look at the edge of the cutout. If you see grey, gritty material with a white skin and wooden slats behind it, you've got lath and plaster. If it looks like a white "sandwich" with brown paper on both sides, that’s drywall.
Sustainability Note: One of the weirdest perks of what was used before drywall is the environmental impact. Modern drywall is a nightmare in landfills because it releases hydrogen sulfide gas when it gets wet. Old plaster? It's mostly lime, sand, and wood. It’s basically just crushed rock returning to the earth.
Moving Forward With Your Historic Walls
Understanding the labor and material that went into a pre-drywall home changes how you look at your space. It wasn't just built; it was applied. Each wall is essentially a massive, flat sculpture.
If you are planning a renovation, think twice before ripping it all out to "modernize." You'll lose the thermal mass and the soundproofing that make old homes feel substantial. Instead, look for a specialist who still knows how to work with lime-based products. They are rare, but they’re out there.
For those stuck with crumbling sections, your next step should be a "tap test." Gently tap your walls. Any spot that sounds hollow or feels "spongy" is a section where the keys have broken. Address those areas with plaster washers immediately to prevent a total collapse. For cosmetic cracks, use a fiberglass mesh tape before applying a setting-type compound (like Durabond) rather than the pre-mixed stuff in the bucket. The setting-type compound undergoes a chemical reaction to harden, making it much stronger for bridging the gaps in old-school masonry.