Making Walls Flat (Plus Sound / Heat Insulation?!)

[jagillham]

I am knocking through our living room and dining room to make one big room, so whilst the disruption is happening I was thinking about trying to get the walls flat.

We have a 1900's terrace, so as you can imagine things are not as straight as they could be. The chimneys have been removed, and low quality plaster work has left the walls less than ideal! We have put a dado rail around in the existing front room previously, and it ranged from being flat to 1.5cm away from the wall. We plan to continue this theme into the new room (although I expect we will have to start again).

Luckily at the moment, the house next to us is vacant and the other side is a single occupant - so we don't have any issues with noise at the moment. But I am considering to "future proof" ourselves if we can. Plus, if possible reduce heat loss.

The room is only 3200mm wide, so we don't have an awful lot of space to play with, as far as I see my options are:

1. Get a professional to "dot & dab" soundboard to the walls flat.
2. Create a stud wall myself that is flat, then insulate/plasterboard.

So I suppose my questions are:

- Is party wall thermal insulation in a terrace worthwhile?
- Does "soundboard" make any real difference directly to the wall?
- Will the stud wall make much odds to sound? (we lose roughly 15cm doing this)
- Any other options / ideas / problems?

Thanks in advance

 

[TerenceQ]

For internal walls I would go with dot and dab (skim finish) and on external walls I would use insulation backed plasterboard (the bonded on type).

Will be very messy and disruptive though.

It's the density that will reduce sound so the denser the better, a stud wall with insulation may not do a lot.

The two principles are:

Airborne sound (TV Music etc.) is density

Impact is isolation (more a problem with floors above) ie a separation between the two surfaces