2022 October - Screwing up the Internal Plywood Walls

          Wham bam screw the plywood to the frame, easy peasy! Well, no, unfortunately not. The plywood is 1200mm wide and 2400mm long. The framing widths are - well I measured 10 different widths and then I stopped measuring. Suffice to say that the framing is very random and not designed for easy installation of internal wall panels. So we had to decide whether it was more trouble to cut every single piece of plywood to size to fit the framing, or to install extra framing in the right spot for each sheet to remain whole.

          We had some spare metal ceiling battens so Josh had a go at cutting them to size, screwing them to the framing and and then attaching the plywood. The below image is the back side of the wall.

          This wasn't really ideal as there was too much flex in the plywood joins. There was some further experimentation with wooden battens but nothing was really working. We really didn't know how much support the plywood would need, and could only learn from testing various ideas. 

        There is almost no information online about using plywood as a wall material. Everyone assumes that all buildings are a) timber framing and b) gyprock sheeting. We didn't want gyprock or cement board as it just gets holes in it too easily. I think it's a stupid building material and I don't know why it is so popular. Maybe it is to keep the handymen in a job as they are constantly fixing it when it breaks. Also we didn't want the hassle of doing all the plastering over the top. Such a waste of time, money and energy when you can just screw up a plywood sheet and then paint it. You need special tools to install gyp, and it costs more money in the long run. 

        Eventually the decision was made to cut every single piece of plywood to size to fit the wall framing. The plywood just had too much bend in it and needed a lot of support. This meant that there was a lot of skinny bits of plywood offcuts. Some of these would be wide enough to be used somewhere else but not all of them. This might mean that the calculations of how much plywood was needed will be off. Oh well.

Below is the bedroom wall with 4 sheets across. There is still a gap across the top that needs filling too.

Next was the living room wall.

Then November rolled around and it was time to start breaking out the insulation. Below you can see the wall behind the insulation is done up until the ceiling battens, And this means that there is insulation installed in the cavity behind the plywood. This sounds easy enough but required a lot of setting everything up to be covered in sheets before starting work to try and reduce the amount of itchy insulation getting on everything. Also in this pic you can see the wall on the right is now finished all the way up to the ceiling. I don't have any pics of the insulation up before the plywood was screwed on because I was avoiding the whole area while Josh was working to try and keep those itchy fibres from getting on me, so you'll just have to imagine it.

Below is the second bedroom, with both the walls on the left and the back having insulation placed inside them.

And below is the two walls on the outside of the bathroom.

Then December rolled around, and the living room walls continued.

In the background of this photo below taken in January of 2023 (of a special visit from an old friend) you can see the kitchen wall done on the left and the living room wall finished to the right.

Next update will be documenting 2023 February, when the solar installation is upgraded.