Why put plywood over drywall?

darsunt

I have an interior wall that has plywood nailed over drywall. Why would anyone want to do this? To soundproof the room, maybe? It sure makes things hard to work with.

concretemasonry

Prevent damage? Drywall certainly needs protection in some areas/applications and exposures.

Dick

DangerMouse

To prevent hockey puck damage perhaps?
Seriously though, I bet it would make things a bit difficult.... weird....

DM

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gregzoll

If in the garage, for use as a bumper. Same with the Utility room.

darsunt

This plywood sheathing is in a bedroom. I've never seen it done like this before. The room is near a busy street, though.
Yes it makes things tough. Instead of a utility knife, I'm using a sawsall to hack through it. Actually should have used a circular saw.

epson

Could be that the drywall was badly damaged and the previous owner didn’t know how to repair it so he slapped on plywood to cover up the damage or he was going to install paneling or waynes coating and needed a nailing surface.

diy-581

I've seen buildings that had 4 sheets of drywall installed one over the other over the years... I suspect that it was a matter of damage to the wall needing to be fixed, but it was quicker to just put up a new thin sheet of drywall than to remove the old stuff and do it right. It's possible that the person put plywood up because he needed to hand something on the wall that could not be supported by just the drywall. Maybe he had a dartboard there at one time... Does it cover the entire wall from floor to ceiling? How well is it attached tot he wall studs? Maybe he had a rock climbing wall installed in there?



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nap

I have been involved with buildings that used plywood behind the drywall to provide strength. One was a school which used to typically be all masonry but in an effort to reduce costs, this plywood/drywall combination was used.

The the other way around doesn't make a lot of sense, at least for an interior wall not subject to extreme abuse. It defeats the purpose drywall was made for and makes it very difficult to have any sort of finished wall surface.

DrHicks

Damage, likely. But who knows.

Our church men's group does a lot of construction/repair/maintenance work for different charities. One charity has a home for troubled teens. They don't even bother with drywall in the interior bedroom walls. We put up 1/2" OSB, paint over it & call it a day. In their case, it's pretty obvious why.

pyper

Could be for sound. It would help a fair bit with higher frequency sound.

Would also be useful if you wanted to hang heavy things (like tools) in arbitrary locations.

It seems like for covering up damage regular paneling would be faster and easier than plywood. I remember "helping" my uncle put up paneling in his third bedroom after the girls moved out to make a den. He put construction adhesive on the back of every sheet. I bet after he sold the house someone was kind of PO'd about that!

Is it detailed (trim around the windows, etc?) or just thrown up?

darsunt

The walls of this room always looked a bit ugly. I never knew why until I cut into them. Double layer, drywall first and then plywood.
The plywood is not fixed particularly tightly to the wall. Just a couple of nails here and there.
Old buildings are such a mystery...

diy-581

Well, that means that it wasn't for a rock climbing wall... You need a bit more support on the attachment of the plywood to the studs than just a "couple of nails here and there"... Still could have been for hanging stuff there though...