When I thought I knew everything about lining, the guys really surprised me that morning. In Austria, GIB boards usually come in one or two sizes only. None of them larger than what one builder can move around. But here they delivered a number of different types of boards in incredible lengths up to 6 meters. Surprise number two was that there was no dedicated plasterboard team, but the regular builders doing the work. Surprise number three was that they only used a minimum number of screws (only about one every 0.7 m) to attach the boards to the wall studs and ceiling rafters. Instead they applied a glue that does the job. My guess is that screws alone won’t be that strong in case of an earthquake, or maybe they’re just lazy and want to save work time for the GIB stoppers (so they have less screws to hide). Surprise four was that they used very long boards installed horizontally on the walls. There is basically just one horizontal gap to stop on each wall – looks effient.
For increased stability we upgraded from standard 10 mm to 13 mm boards (compare: In Austria we typically used 2 layers of 13 mm boards, with stud distances of 63 cm instead of 40 cm though).
