What decorative finishes do you plan?
Deep back box into lath and plaster
- Thread starter ismellburning
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The plan with the existing walls is to make good the surrounding area to the light switch and paint, pending plasterboarding later.
When the plasterboarding happens, the plan is to skim it and paint it, with the obvious fall-back of getting a man in, in the event it turns out finishing plaster is much harder than I think it will be.
When the plasterboarding happens, the plan is to skim it and paint it, with the obvious fall-back of getting a man in, in the event it turns out finishing plaster is much harder than I think it will be.
I've always tried to make the holes for the backbox next to a stud so you can screw the side of the box into the side of the stud.
If you can't manage that then i've had success in cutting the hole in the lath and plaster and then screwing through the plaster and lath into two pieces of 2 x 1" either side of the hole inside the cavity, spaced so that the box sits snugly in between. You can then screw your box to those either side and you get a box that is as solid as the lath and plaster wall surrounding it.
If you can't manage that then i've had success in cutting the hole in the lath and plaster and then screwing through the plaster and lath into two pieces of 2 x 1" either side of the hole inside the cavity, spaced so that the box sits snugly in between. You can then screw your box to those either side and you get a box that is as solid as the lath and plaster wall surrounding it.
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I'm too far from a stud but your idea of putting in a pair of blocks either side of the back box sounds a very good one. You'd just screw straight through the existing plaster to fix them, or would you hack it back to the lath first?
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Yes, that's another approach. If your plaster is anything like mine, if you attempt to screw through it (near to the edge of a hole), it will merely crumble, so I think you'd very probably end up removing the plaster, whether intentionally or accidentally!
Kind Regards, John
It probably will be.
But with care over filling joints and nail/screw holes, and then putting up heavy duty lining paper to paint over, it can be avoided.
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I suspect as much. Beauty of a fixer upper, though, you can experiment with new things without (usually) leaving anything worse than when you started
And how is the box supported for the rest of it's length?
I screwed through the plaster making sure i was also going through the centre of a lath and also pre-drilled the hole to make sure i didn't split the lath. Sometimes the plaster crumbles, sometimes it doesn't. You've inevitably got some making good to do around the hole so its not the end of the world if the plaster does crumble.
You need to make sure that your blocks are long enough so that you can also screw through the uncut laths above and below your hole so that everything is nicely tied together.
Its a box for a light switch. Its short in length so its stable even though its only fixed on one side. I've used this method loads of times and never had a problem with the box moving.
If its a plug socket then i screw it into the stud on one side and screw a block to the laths on the other that i screw the other side of the box to.
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