Ooh, looks like cement board that you’d normally see used as a tile substrate. If so, it would be in 3x5 or 4x8 foot sheets and you’d have seams with mud and tape.
Your house must be super quiet. An inch of cement is pretty acoustically dead. I’d kill for that in my basement ceiling.
And you’d do more killing afterward. Plus torture. Go for it, Dexter.
Ha! I’ve downsized but I have a 2kW subwoofer. And my mains have 12” woofers and compression tweeters, so it can get loud to quite loud.
Good for drowning out the screams.
I wonder if @ao_fan can have her ceiling replaced with this?
I suspect it would cost a lot. The material is more, labor is more, and I suspect more safety issues and cleanup from the silica dust.
What would be effective and less expensive would be adding a second layer of drywall with Green Glue separating that layer from the existing ceiling. I think she could get 6-8dB sound reduction - though below 100Hz or so it doesn’t help. Practically speaking, to the human ear it might sound 30-40% quieter, roughly.
I’m not sure 30-40% quieter is sufficient. I think “pretty acoustically dead” / “drowning out the screams” is more along the lines of what she needs.
After thinking about this for a bit, I think for a given budget, drywall will always be more effective. For the cost of doing one layer of cement board you could just leave the existing drywall in place, cut some holes in it and slip rock wool in the cavities. Then add two more layers of drywall, with Green Glue between all the layers.
I got to tell you, the house is cooler with the concrete drywall I’ve noticed.
Inching along on the bath project. Got the antique lights all figured out, need to find globes. Ordered a toilet and bidet seat thing (both Toto), quarter-sawn oak for the baseboards and door/window casings, a tub faucet, and I’m about to order the tub. Still need a shower door, and some kind of linen storage thing for one corner, will probably buy something old. I think that’s it.
We’re going on vacation the first half of July and I don’t want to split this up, will work on starting when we return. It’ll take a good six weeks.
Got the tub and faucet yesterday. Both are boxed in the garage so you get stock photos today. The faucet we got comes out of the wall, but same model otherwise as the pic.
Finding a faucet was tough, we wanted polished brass with a hand shower thing. Not many options, and a lot of them are from manufacturers that look kind of shoddy. This one is from Kingston Brass, I’ve heard of them but never seen one, reviews were positive. I did take the parts out of the box, everything is solid brass, very happy with the build quality, except I’m not sure what valves are used. The only thing I don’t like is the connections for the hot/cold have rubber washers, and I’m not sure about burying rubber washers inside a wall. I’m going to ask my plumber about that, I bet we can find another way to make that connection that will last 50 years.
Sharkbites are apparently up to code for burial and in walls.hard to believe. I had to use them once when I cut a water line in our ground floor.
I can still remember the three seconds of puzzlement when I was using the sawsall to cut the drain pipe and I got a sudden shower. I’m thinking, hey the drain shouldn’t be under pressure…hey it’s not stopping…oh crap I put supply lines down there.
Looks like a very complicated and old-timey phone
Not to yuck your yum but, how do you shower with a hand shower thing like that? It seems like it would be a giant PITA.
In a tub? I use it to rinse off at the end of the bath. YMMV.
So uh, the priority/urgency of my first home improvement project has increased. You may think I mean the kitchen backsplash - but no - I mean my office carpet.
It smells like old lady cat urine now. It lovely.
@SpaceLobster Sharkbites are approved by IPC, I think pretty much every state in the US and at least most of Europe allows them. I’m not opposed to them, but I am a little hesitant about putting them behind drywall. My faucet came with what are basically the rubber washers you’d find in a garden hose, and I’m very hesitant about burying that in a wall. Once I figure out what thread it is, I’m guessing we can either buy appropriate adapters or sweat something together to join it to pex.
@dr_t_non-fan yes, yes it does. I texted a pic to my friend and he said when he saw the thumbnail pic he thought it was a phone.
@Snake first, also a big fan of the phrase ‘not to yuck your yum.’ My wife is in the same camp as @twig93 , especially for rinsing her hair. Fear not, I am also going to install a separate shower in the room, roughly 34"x40".
So, why the bathtub? I mean, yeah, I have a separates tub and shower in my en suite, but I bought it that way, and I haven’t had time to increase my wife’s closet space.