Something so simple and easy to work with. A resource that you find in most old house renovations. And the best part? It’s free! Plaster lath.
For those of you whom haven’t had the pleasure of gutting a room in a historic home, lath is the stuff behind the wall plaster. It’s not used in modern building because these days it’s all sheetrock on studs. Rock on studs sounds sexy, but plaster is way hotter.
Going back to lath being free. People just throw it away! But if you value your time, it ain’t so cheap after all. There’s a fair amount of work that goes into recycled lath projects. Nails have to be taken out, the wood has to be sanded and cut. They may need nailing depending on the project. Each small piece. Backsplashes need to be properly sealed. And that’s just the natural tone. Do you know how time consuming it is to stain each piece?
That being said, we LOVE, LOVE, LOVE these sample boards we did! We left one with natural wood color and stained the other multi color. As mentioned, these will be our sample boards for various projects such as headboards, art installations, backsplash, furniture and entire walls.
Want?
5 Comments
Hi there,
What a lovely design, would make for a nice wall decor 🙂 we build in stone here and not much plaster is used, but it sounds like a great idea.
Graziella
I live in mo. and need to find some lath board can you help thanks kevin earney
Lowe’s has the Lath Boards in bundles of 50 in the lumber department. The cost in our area is about $16 a bundle
What is the easiest way to sand this old lath and do you trim all the edges to fit so nicely together?
No easy way of sanding. It’s tedious. We did each piece individually first. Since we used varying lengths, we sanded before cutting, but I wouldn’t recommend taking a palm sander to them after they are secured in place as they are not the same thickness and it can loosen the glue and/or nails.