How to identify the curvature of the wall when plastering. What if the walls are crooked? Do-it-yourself visual alignment of walls

The most important thing in repair is its successful completion. And it will be very disappointing if serious flaws are revealed when applying the finishing touches.

Already at the stage of installation of the plinth, floor or ceiling, there may be dissatisfaction with the quality of the repair. And no wonder, because the plinth, in fact, is a straight rail, perfectly emphasizing the slightest curvature of the walls.

In many cases, the connection of walls to adjacent surfaces, such as the floor or ceiling, looks like an uneven, wavy line that spoils the whole final look.

This happens due to the fact that, often, the owners refuse to level the walls, hoping for the quality of the rough finish. And in large-panel houses, the walls are in vain considered to be even by definition.

How to straighten curved walls?

Visual alignment of walls is the type of finishing work, thanks to which all adjoining walls with floors, ceilings and other walls will become almost perfect. And all this can be done with your own hands - with minimal time, effort and money. An excellent appearance can be achieved by making a partial alignment of the walls.

The meaning of this work is to ensure that all adjunctions, that is, parts of the walls located near adjacent planes, become even and straight. As a result, ceiling and floor plinths, baguettes, fillets, cornices and moldings will look even in these places, as if on a string.

Read also: Laying gypsum tiles: tips and tricks

In order to align the wall in this way, you need a special tool, the “trapeze rule”. In fact, this is just an aluminum rail or stick, which is considered to be the standard. Applying it to the surface, determine the curvature of the wall and make a measurement of all unnecessary gaps. The painter also works with him when he levels the wall. The length of the rule is considered an important indicator, because this value determines the quality level of the final result.

The material with which this procedure is performed is a gypsum plaster mixture, for example, "Rotband". It should be diluted with a powerful drill and mixer, and the consistency is adjusted depending on the thickness of the layer. Apply plaster with a spatula or trowel, and smear it with it.

Then, without allowing the mixture to dry, the excess plaster is cut off the wall using the “trapezoidal rule”. Any gypsum mixtures set quite quickly. "Rotband", for example, dries out so much in 1-1.5 hours that you can safely do the next approach, throw on another layer.

The final surface should be of suitable quality for processing with its finishing putty. For example, Vetonit LR+ finishing putty is very popular. This putty is great for filling a flat, smooth, uniform surface, which will be the result of leveling the walls with your own hands.

Read also: How to putty the ceiling?

You can start, for example, from the most prominent corner. The junction here will be a vertical strip of the wall from the corner, with a width of 20 to 60 cm, depending on the degree of curvature of the wall.


The rest of the plane, probably, will not need to be leveled at all. In the best case, you will need to apply a layer with a spatula to eliminate small holes and cracks. First you need to find, over the entire width of the junction, the so-called "zeros". "Zero" is the most protruding point of the surface, a hillock, a bump. As a rule, there are several of these "zeros" on the plane.

Alignment, just the same, consists in making the entire surface to be treated in the same plane with the “zeros”, leveling it with them by applying a layer of plaster. When leveling the vertical angle, the “rule” must be kept vertical. Accordingly, leveling the adjoining to the floor - horizontally. And the remaining shells, scratches and bumps will be smeared with the next approach, just with a spatula. In any case, the decisive factor is always the level of quality requirements.

The longer the "rule", the less irregularities on the wall will remain. For example, when substituting the “rule” for a corner, it seriously swings. However, it is considered possible to leave the angle with a tubercle in the middle, since as a result of visual alignment, the fracture will be as smooth and visually invisible as possible. The usual "rule-trapezium" 150 cm long is great for these purposes in any room.

Before you start leveling very curved walls in a room, they need to be prepared. It is required to remove old wallpaper or cracked paint, and, if necessary, remove the swollen layer of plaster. This must be done carefully so as not to accidentally damage the wiring. When the walls are cleaned, they need to be treated with a primer. On primed walls, the leveling material will lie better. To align the walls with drywall, you need to use a special mounting adhesive. Sold at any hardware store.

Alignment of walls with drywall

The most common way to level walls.

Pros:

  • convenient and quick way to level curved walls;
  • saving material;
  • durable uniform surface.

Minuses:

  • hollow, echoing wall;
  • wall thickness increases.

After the walls are prepared, you need to find out the curvature of the wall. If the curvature is up to 7 mm, then you can simply apply glue to the drywall sheet and glue it. If the curvature is up to 20 mm, then we apply glue in the form of cakes around the entire perimeter on the drywall sheet. If the walls are too curved, and the curvature is longer than 20 mm, then first we glue the primed plasterboard strips to the wall, and the sheet of material itself will be glued to these strips.

Please note that the glue sets quite quickly, about half an hour. Therefore, it is not necessary to coat the entire wall with it at once. Drywall sheets should be wall, and preferably moisture resistant. After applying the glue, we apply the drywall to the wall, and at the top and bottom we make an indent of about 10-20 mm, and put it under the lining sheet. This will allow excess moisture to evaporate from the adhesive, thus sticking faster. If there are outlets for communications in the wall, holes should be cut in advance on drywall.

frame method. To level very curved walls, you can use the frame method of installing drywall. The essence of the method is to install a drywall sheet on frames made of wood or metal profiles. If you want to use wood as a frame, then keep in mind that it must be dried as much as possible, otherwise the bars will dry out when the wall is leveled, which will lead to the curvature of the entire structure. Sheets can disperse and gaps form between them, so it is better to use metal profiles. The metal frame requires the installation of two types of profile: rack and rail. Guide profiles are needed to install the contour, and are installed parallel to each other, first to the ceiling surface, and then, using a plumb line, the exact location of attachment to the floor is determined. To do this, we take self-tapping screws and connect the guide profiles and the rack profiles, which are inserted into the guides in increments of 50 cm.

Leveling very curved walls using plaster

without spending a lot of effort and money? There is an option -. There are two types: gypsum and cement-sand. Any mixture will do, but gypsum mixture is more convenient to work with and the quality is higher. At the corners of the walls we attach beacons with a mass, as close as possible to the wall, in order to determine the level of curvature. We also install beacons along the wall. Now we knead the solution until a homogeneous thick state so that it does not drain from the spatula. Next, we wet the walls with water and throw a solution on it. After that, we evaluate the level of the plastered wall in accordance with the beacons, and remove the excess solution. When we got rid of the bumps, we rub the bumps with a grater. When the solution hardens slightly, we get rid of the beacons, and close up the remaining grooves.

The curvature of the walls in our apartments has already become almost a topic for jokes, but during repairs this curvature has to be corrected, and here it’s no longer a laughing matter. So what are the options for dealing with this scourge? I'll try to tell.
There are several options:
1. Masking the bumpiness of the walls with wallpaper with a cheerful pattern. To be honest, this is an option inherited from Soviet times, and therefore we will not consider it as suitable only for cosmetic repairs, and then only as a temporary measure.
2. Installation of wall panels. This option is easy to perform, as it does not require any preparation of the walls or special skills, and the commercially available selection of wall panels allows you to choose the color and texture just for your interior. There are also moisture-resistant wall panels suitable for use in the bathroom, as well as panels with improved heat-insulating and sound-absorbing functions. The disadvantage of the panels is that they give the interior a somewhat office look, and, in fact, they do not look rich.
3. Drywall. In my opinion, the best material for leveling walls, excluding plaster. It can be fastened both to the frame-crate, and directly glued to the wall using gypsum with the addition of bone glue to prevent instant setting of the gypsum. In the first case, under the drywall, you can additionally place sound and heat insulation, as well as various communications (wiring and antenna wire, for example). Drywall can be either wallpapered, pre-treated with self-tapping screws to prevent corrosion, or whitewashed and painted with various paints. So there are many options for finishing such walls.
4. Plaster. Probably the most time-consuming way of leveling walls, but giving the best and most durable result. One of the advantages of this method compared to leveling with drywall or wall panels is less loss of room space, and this is important for small rooms.
However, it is worth paying attention directly to plaster mixtures, which can be divided into two groups according to the price / quality ratio. The first group is cheap plaster mixtures made using outdated technologies and suitable only in cases where the cost of repairs is at the forefront. The second group is plaster mixtures made either by domestic companies using the technologies of Western companies or their own, but developed recently, or original plaster mixtures produced by Western companies.
Here, probably, are all the ways to level the walls, and which one to choose depends only on you and your budget and skills. Or entrust the choice to specialists repairmen.

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User comments:

    The best option in terms of cost, simplicity and end result is definitely drywall! When sticking to the wall, space is not lost, and if insulation is needed, we attach it to the profile. By the way, there is a special Perlfix glue for gluing, you don’t need to invent anything with bone glue!

    We had a problem with a very curved wall in the living room. For a long time we hid it with a large carpet, but when everyone finally got tired of it, we decided to look for another way out. And they came to the conclusion that the ideal option is drywall: it is inexpensive and there is practically no hassle. At the same time, we decided to level the rest of the walls in the room. The work turned out to be quite simple - they glued sheets of drywall, then painted it - and the room was transformed beyond recognition! Three years have passed since then, but there are no problems and, I hope, will not be.
    So my personal choice in a situation with curved walls is drywall and drywall only.

    Of course the curvature of the walls is a huge problem and the author has given very good advice that can be of help to many.
    Well, I can’t but agree that drywall in this case is an ideal option, cheap, high quality and beautiful. and very quickly you can level the walls with drywall.

    Drywall is definitely the best option, but if you install it yourself, then probably even more labor-intensive than plaster.
    We plastered with a mixture of Knauf. The good news is that many popular manufacturers have everything in the kit - plaster, finish, and primer. Everything “lives without conflict” among themselves 🙂

    I'm also leaning towards plaster. Drywall is a good thing for spacious apartments, and in city birdhouses every centimeter counts and you don’t want to lose it. In addition, when using drywall, it is necessary to foresee options for attaching hanging cabinets, carpets, etc. in advance. Yes, and the strength of the plaster is much better.

    In our small bathroom (less than 3 sq. m), part of the walls were leveled with plaster, and the side with pipes and risers was sheathed with drywall. The optimal option turned out. If everyone covered with drywall, then the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe bathroom would become very tiny. Plastered walls are a more natural option, they do not have voids, they do not tap like gypsum. In general, you should use plaster wherever you can do without drywall.

    It is better to use drywall using wall sticker technology not only in small apartments. In this option, there is less danger of damaging the partition mechanically, and then furniture and paintings can be hung anywhere on the wall, just take longer fasteners. And sheathing to align the walls along the frame makes sense only in rooms that need mandatory additional insulation.

    Of course, it is best to thoroughly plaster the wall along the lighthouses so that any finish can be used later. But this option is not always applicable, for example, if the family is experiencing financial difficulties or has a small child, and you don’t want the apartment to be filled with the “flavors” of damp plaster. As a temporary option for masking bumps, you can use mirrored wall stickers that simply distract attention from the quality of the surface.

  • Alignment requires curved, uneven or littered walls, if any in your home. Wall alignment is usually always necessary during renovations. Whatever quality you buy, they will not be able to hide the curvature of the wall from the eyes. When installing furniture, you will not only not hide, but, on the contrary, visually emphasize the defectiveness of the surface. Walls with a large curvature are usually leveled with either plaster mixes. The first step in leveling a curved wall is to prepare its surface. The old surface is cleaned of wallpaper, cracked paint or plaster with a spatula, hammer and perforator. The work must be done carefully.

Wall preparation

  • Do not forget about safety when performing repairs! Remember, wires are hidden under the treated surface. Before starting work, disconnect the power supply in the repaired room. If you have been living in an apartment for a long time, consider whether this renovation would be a great opportunity to change the wiring, install additional sockets and switches, and move lighting fixtures to another place.

Padding. Exposure of lighthouses

  • After you get rid of the old materials on the wall, treat its surface with a primer designed specifically to ensure that the wall and the new leveling material are perfectly connected and do not crack or peel. Proper wall alignment is a complex and lengthy process. The first step will be the installation of special beacons. They are placed on the surface that you are going to align. Subsequently, these beacons will become the level for all subsequent measurements. Beacons should be installed with special care and responsibility. To obtain the greatest possible accuracy, use in your work a building bubble or laser level, a plumb line or a thread stretched over a horizontal surface. After installing the beacons, we proceed to the next stage. To do this, we use a gypsum plaster mixture in our work. We carry out all work according to the level, conventional or laser, striving to obtain the most even surface in the same plane as possible.

Applying plaster

  • The third stage will be the plastering of the walls. The plaster mortar is prepared using the manufacturer's instructions on the package. For faster and better kneading, we use a drill with a special nozzle in the form of a mixer or a plaster station for machine application of plaster. We start work from the bottom of the wall, strictly focusing on the position of the lighthouses.

How to align wall corners

Date: 2012-08-13

From this article, you will learn how to straighten wall corners. At the beginning, a little theory about why and when it is appropriate to align the corners of the walls, and then step by step with photographs.

So why are the corners of the walls crooked? Because the plaster is not of high quality. Curved corners are striking. In any case, during the repair, the corners must be aligned. This can be done by level or by plane (by bumps).

Which method and when to apply? If the walls are prepared for wallpapering, then it is better to level the corners. If the wallpaper is patterned or has vertical stripes, then with curved walls you will have to cut the wallpaper in the corner, as a wrinkle will form. This will spoil the whole look of the wallpaper, the picture will shift. With other types (painting, decorative plaster), you can align the corners along the plane. Personally, I think that it is better to align not only the corners of the walls, but the whole walls.

Brief technology: The corners are leveled with gypsum plaster, making a beacon in the very corner, and then the corner is tightened to the width of the rule. The longer the rule, the smoother and less noticeable the transition from the corner to the wall. It is necessary to use gypsum plaster (starting putty), as it allows you to level fairly thin layers without sagging.

Let's get started. You will need:

  • Primer
  • Gypsum plaster
  • Drill with whisk
  • rule
  • Buckets
  • Spatula
  • Squirt (required)
  • Sandpaper number 40 and grater

I will say right away that it is better to have two rules in the arsenal, one 2.5 m, the second 1.5 m.

Before you align the corners of the walls, you need to determine where the bumps are. To do this, put the rule in a corner and look at the gap. Mark the most protruding places with a pencil. Now put the rule horizontally on the bump in the corner and check if there is a gap. If there is, then the hillock can be knocked down. Thus, you will need less materials to level the corner, because the layer will become smaller.

If you use a 1.5 m rule to tighten the plaster, then we prime the walls from the corner to a distance slightly greater than the length of the rule - 1.6 m. After it dries, you can make a lighthouse in the corner. You already know where your hillocks are, and you need to make a beacon along them, using them as stops.

Dilute the gypsum plaster, mix it twice so that it is without lumps. Then apply a 5 cm wide track on the wall in the very corner and pull it vertically with the rule. The result should look like this beacon:

Pay attention to some subtleties. In each corner you need to make two lighthouses, since there are also two walls. And if you align all the corners in the room, then you first need to do one beacon in the corner, in a circle. This way you won't damage the neighboring beacons in one corner while they are wet. If you have only a short rule, which is not enough for the entire height, then the lighthouses are made along the bottom, and when the bottom hardens, the top part of the lighthouse is completed. If the layer is too thin and “tears”, then it should be diluted with water to a more liquid state.

Separately, let's talk about beacons by level. For their device, you will also need a level. Attach the rule to the wall and determine the most protruding place. This will be one reference point for the beacon. Then you need to drive a chopstick into the wall and screw in a self-tapping screw so that you end up with a strictly vertical beacon. Read more about lighthouses in the article: Application of gypsum plaster. Starter putty.

After the beacons dry, you can tighten the wall using the rule. We need to bring the wall and the corner to nothing. To do this, we spread putty on the length of the rule, rest the rule on the lighthouse in the corner and on the wall and tighten the excess. As a result, we get this angle:

You need to use a squirt gun, as a thin layer of putty will tear in the area of ​​​​the lighthouse and at the opposite end. This happens when you re-tighten. spray the surface with water again. When removing the putty from the rule back into the bucket, immediately throw the last one to the side (from the side of the lighthouse). She is dirty and dry. Once in a bucket of normal plaster, she will draw furrows for you.

After the plaster has hardened, it can be stretched in a thin layer to fill in all scratches and grooves. After complete drying, the corners should be sanded. To do this, put the rule against the wall and move it up and down. Black marks are bumps that should be sanded. The farther from the corner, the crooked the wall, because you didn’t make a lighthouse on the wall itself.

You can also align the corners of the walls above and below, so that the plinth and baguette look smoother.

That's all, write your opinion on how to align the corners of the walls in the comments.

Views: 10599

If something is not clear to you - ask a question on the page: ask a repair question

How to level walls - leveling walls (4 photos)

Small cracks or bumps will help hide expensive corrugated wallpaper, but if the walls in your apartment are “wavy”, then only alignment will help.

According to the types of materials used, there are two types of wall alignment - dry (installation of various plasterboard structures) and raw (using building mixtures). Each of these methods is effective only if a strict sequence of work is observed, but has its own characteristics.

So, the alignment of walls with plaster is used for small differences in "heights" - from 30 to 60 mm. If necessary, you can level the walls with a greater curvature in a crude way, but this will require more time and money for material and work. In this case, it is better to give preference to the installation of the frame, followed by plasterboard sheathing.

But no matter which method you choose, the main thing is to pay maximum attention to aligning the corners. Curvature, imperceptible to the eye, will manifest itself when gluing borders and installing skirting boards.

Immediately before leveling the wall, it is necessary to carry out a number of preparatory work.

First of all, it is necessary to determine the dimensions of the wall irregularities. For horizontal measurement, you can use a cord, pulling it tightly along the wall, or use a building level, the length of which should not be less than 1.5 m. Vertical irregularities are measured with a plumb line. If the differences are not more than 3 - 5 cm, then this wall defect is corrected with the help of building mixtures.

Leveling walls with plaster

When choosing a dry building mix, it is necessary to pay attention to both the thickness of the applied layer and the type of “binding” material (cement or gypsum).

When using drywall for wall cladding, pay attention to the base - it should not have crumbling fragments and be durable.

The wall lined with plasterboard must be protected from exposure to excessive moisture. This wall also cannot be subjected to spatial deformation. Do not allow freezing of the wall and the appearance of condensate.

And in order for drywall sheets to hold better and longer, the wall must be cleaned of residues of mortar, oil, wax and other substances that impair the contact properties of the adhesive. After that, the wall must be primed.

On very porous, loose surfaces, apply with a brush or sprayer.

On walls that do not absorb moisture - and other dense low-porous surfaces - a special primer marked "concrete active".

Before installing drywall sheets, do not forget to install hidden wiring. Mounting boxes for sockets should not protrude above the wall surface by more than 20 mm.

Pros and cons of leveling walls with plaster and drywall

The use of building mixtures does not reduce the living area of ​​the apartment. But this method is quite laborious, in the production of work there is a lot of dirt - debris and dust.

When facing walls with drywall, no pre-cleaning of the surface is required. In addition, heat and sound insulating materials can be laid behind the frame, as well as various communications can be hidden. But the walls sheathed with plasterboard “eat up” part of the usable area of ​​​​the apartment and withstand a much lower load compared to a wall covered with building mixture.

When buying material, pay attention to the color of drywall sheets. Its moisture-resistant varieties can be distinguished by a green cardboard coating, while ordinary sheets will be gray. For facing the walls of the bathroom, kitchen and other rooms with high humidity, choose GKLV sheets.

Got crooked walls? align! » do-it-yourself apartment renovation

If the walls in the apartment are crooked and you absolutely do not want to put up with this, there are several options:

1. Paste wallpaper with a cheerful pattern to visually hide the unevenness of the walls.

2. Install wall panels.

3. Straighten the walls with drywall sheets.

4. Arm yourself with the necessary plaster mixtures, beacons, squares - and use them to level the walls completely and irrevocably.

With option 1, popular in Soviet times, everything is obvious - it will not radically improve the situation. For this reason, let's move on immediately to the remaining 3rd ones.

Panels

There are quite a few advantages to this option. There is no need to specially prepare the walls, there are more than 40 varieties of panel decors today: under natural wood, with imitation of foliage, marble, there are even similar ones that you cannot distinguish from. The panels are moisture resistant, have good sound absorption and thermal insulation.

They are usually attached to a crate (metal or made of a frame that is attached to the wall), under which it is possible to hide the wires, because there is a space of up to 25 millimeters between the panel and the wall. And it's easy to replace: I installed the crate 1 time - and change the panels as much as you like, like ordinary wallpaper.

Drywall

Plastering materials: traditions and difficultiesPlastering worksWhat a parquet restorer should understand The Basics of Methods This now fashionable material is a well-forgotten old one - simply dry plaster: after all, a GK sheet is a very dense cardboard on a gypsum base. It also needs a crate, metal or wood. However, it is possible to attach a sheet of GK to the wall without a crate - just stick it with the so-called gypsum mastic test, which is made of building gypsum and 2 percent bone solution (glue is necessary so that the gypsum does not harden in the same minute). Drywall is also the best base for wallpaper. They can be glued without any pre-treatment, the only thing worth doing is to cover the nail heads with nitro enamel or alcohol varnish to prevent rusting. And it is possible not to paste over the walls, but, for example, to whitewash or paint with oil or glue paint, like ordinary plastered surfaces. It is not advisable to just use lime paints, as they do not adhere well to cardboard.

Plaster

When leveling with plaster mixtures (gypsum or cement-sand), you will have almost no loss of space, because it is placed directly on a curved wall. Of the additional material, you will only need plaster profiles: plaster beacon guide rails (or simply "beacons") and protective plaster corners.

Although pay attention to plaster mixtures.

In terms of cost-quality ratio, experts divide plasters into subsequent groups.

I-I - the cheapest materials produced by outdated methods. They are applicable in those situations where the decisive factor is cost, not quality.

The second group consists of high-tech mixtures that are made by domestic enterprises jointly with foreign companies or on their own, but with the use of imported components (most often, these are modifying additives).

And finally, the original plasters of well-known foreign companies are related to the third group.

For those who are planning to carry out a good repair of buildings, experts advise buying materials of the II and III groups, if possible. At the same time, plaster compositions of Russian and foreign manufacture can be successfully combined, lining the most "responsible" expensive imported building materials, and all others - also of high quality, but cheaper domestic ...

It will come in handy

Beacons make it possible in a short time and at no extra cost to obtain a smooth plastered surface with a selected thickness of the plaster layer. In addition, they make it possible to maintain the solidity of the walls after plastering, because they remain in the wall and do not require subsequent dismantling. And it is no less important that such work does not require high qualifications, you can cope with it yourself.

Plaster corners protect the corners of the premises from damage. They also create these most even and beautiful corners.

Online about wall alignment:

Wall alignment. how to level the walls with your own hands.

I already wrote about leveling ceilings. Now I will describe in detail how to align the walls. Unfortunately, in our old, and often just built and commissioned houses, walls and ceilings leave much to be desired. Drops, waves, all kinds of cracks and dents. If you are not indifferent to the appearance of your apartment, then of course, before using the walls for wallpapering, overlaying or other types of finishing work, you need to level them.

How to level walls? First of all, as in the case of leveling the ceiling, decide how you want to level the walls in your apartment. This can be done with building mixtures or using drywall.

Have you decided what kind of manipulations with your wall you will do after leveling? Are you going to align the walls with wallpaper? Under the tiles? Or are you just going to paint it?

If, for example, you want to stick wallpaper or paint a wall, then both options are possible: both leveling the walls with drywall, and using building mixtures. If you are going to lay tiles, then we need wall leveling compounds for a more rigid adhesion of the tile to the wall.

How to level walls with building mixtures? Now I will explain how to do it yourself and quite simply. In one of the upper corners of our wall we drive in a nail, leaving somewhere 2-3 mm on the surface. This is our first beacon. Next, we take the thread and attach some kind of load to it, the same nut. We get a hang. We fasten this plumb line to our nail in such a way that the load almost reaches the floor. We wait until the plumb line stops swinging and freezes in place. We get a straight line. We drive in the second carnation at the bottom of our wall so that the thread and the head of the nail are on the same line. Approximately as in the picture on the right.

Any person dreams of living in a beautiful apartment with high-quality repairs, in which modern furniture is tastefully selected, as well as a comfortable interior. However, if the room has uneven walls, there is no visibility of this magnificence. Often, to hide a small blockage, apartment owners try to close it with furniture or use other tricks.
However, all these efforts are in vain, because only the alignment of uneven walls will help correct the defect, and not their masking. For example, furniture can only emphasize these shortcomings.

Why are walls crooked?

Uneven walls happen for various reasons. Most often in the old housing stock, the ceilings and walls are very uneven. However, it is difficult to find ideal walls in new-build apartments.

Most prefabricated high-rise buildings have curved walls because the panels are uneven. However, this unevenness allows you to operate at home, since the unevenness does not affect reliability. When the plate is installed, it can turn around a little.

To understand this clearly, take a landscape sheet and put it on the table. The sheet is even, however, try to lift it by taking the ends diagonally, pull the ends in different directions - this will reveal an interesting fact to you that will happen to the album sheet.

Concrete slabs are also bent in the same way. They have slight deviations, which are sufficient to form a blockage of the walls and break the geometry of the corners in the room.

How to determine vertical deviations

There is a real possibility of self-alignment of the walls, however, first you need to determine the location of the blockage. To do this, pay attention to each corner to assume that some of the walls are uneven, and then check if you think correctly.

This can be done in an elementary way: tie a heavy object to the end of a strong and thin rope. Attach its opposite end to the corner where the top floor meets the walls. If the rope is parallel to the walls, then they are even, and when observing deviations, you can understand the existing blockages that need to be eliminated.

It is best to check the evenness of the walls with two people: one needs to hold the cord, and the other from a few meters away to see if the lines are parallel.

You can use another option to assess the condition of the surface of the walls. To carry out this work, you must have a homemade plumb line with a non-rotating load. Hanging is carried out in each corner of the room, for which the cord must be fixed on a nail driven into the wall.

The place for hammering a nail should be near the ceiling so that the plumb line is located near the wall without touching its surface.

After that, the plumb line moves along the nail until it reaches the optimal position. Further, at the bottom of the wall, another nail is hammered, the head of which should touch the plumb line.

A similar operation is performed with the other edge of the wall. The next step is to pull the cords along the lighthouse points, of which there are only four. The result is an accurate picture that allows you to judge the state of the wall surface.

If the deviation is small (up to 10 mm), when performing repairs, putty the walls, using gypsum and cement mixtures for leveling.

If vertical deviations exceed this figure, it is necessary to level the walls with drywall.

First you need to prepare the surface

Before starting work on leveling the walls, you need to know what order should be observed in this case. First, the surface must be prepared, since it is very important that the base is strong and there are no crumbling areas in it. At the preparation stage, old wallpaper and dilapidated plaster are removed.

After cleaning and preparing the wall, it is carefully primed using a roller, brush or sprayer. After priming the base, you need to let it dry for at least 12 hours. This circumstance makes it advisable to prime the walls in the evening so that they can dry overnight.

What are the ways to level the walls

Given the materials used for work, the curvature of the walls is leveled in two ways:

  1. The first is the crude method, in which building mixtures are used.
  2. The second method can be considered dry, which is associated with the installation of the structure.

The methods are equally good, but only if all processes are clearly observed. Each of the methods has its own distinctive features in the form of advantages and disadvantages.

Leveling walls using plaster is most often used if there are small differences - up to 50 mm. You can also use plaster for surfaces that have a large curvature, however, you need to prepare for the additional financial costs that will be needed to complete the work and purchase additional materials. This means that the best option for leveling the large curvature of the walls is to mount the frame and sheath it with drywall.

We level the walls with plaster and beacons

After determining the possible irregularities of the walls and preparing their surface, work begins related to their direct alignment.

Do not forget in a timely manner, before starting work, turn off the electrical energy. And when cleaning walls, do it carefully, trying not to damage the elements of electrical wiring hidden in the walls.

To ensure that the plaster is firmly fixed, be sure to prime the walls. Thanks to this operation, undesirable delamination of materials can be prevented. The primer helps to increase the moisture resistance. The use of cement milk, which includes cement, water and sand, is widely used for cement mixture.

The most popular and easiest way to avoid wall curvature is to level the walls with plaster.

If wet leveling with plaster is used, it is convenient to use the technology of "beacons", which are special metal elements made of a flexible material - aluminum.

It is necessary to insert a beacon into a curved wall in order to align the wall with it in the future. To better understand the function of the lighthouse, we will take: if the wall is littered from above, then the lighthouse rests against the wall below, and from above, between the lighthouse and the wall, some material is placed to eliminate unevenness.

The size of the tool with which you will apply the plaster affects the distance that should be between the beacons.

How to install beacons

Beacon rails are installed along with the installation of profiles on opposite walls. To check each lighthouse for verticality, plumb lines are used, and these profiles are attached to the wall using building plaster. Gypsum must be applied to the rail in several places, keeping distances between them up to 50 cm. After that, the cord is pulled through the lower, middle and upper profiles. The following rails are also mounted on the wall, but the cord should only lightly touch them.

You can attach beacons with self-tapping screws, but this slows down the speed of work, which subsequently greatly simplifies them. Even for a non-professional, it will be easy to adjust the vertical lines by twisting or unscrewing the screws.

What is better to use for leveling walls

The use of the leveling compound depends on the maximum thickness of the leveling layer. It is also affected by the type of binder used - cement or gypsum. The use of a cement mixture is advisable for rooms with high humidity (bathroom, kitchen), and gypsum compositions are used for residential premises, since gypsum is able to maintain the desired microclimate in the room well.

Using the "wet method" to level the walls

After finishing the placement of the beacons, it remains to do the following work: dilute 10-15 liters of plaster and apply it on the wall between the beacons. The mixture should have a certain consistency: not very liquid, so that it does not slip off the walls, and not too thick - in this case it is difficult to apply. When using gypsum compositions in work, they must be in such quantity that they can be worked out within an hour.

After you have applied the mixture to the wall, take a rule that has the required length and press it against the beacons, then leveling the surface, performing bottom-up or top-down movements. If there is not enough mixture in some places, it is added and again carried out by the rule. Repeating such actions is necessary until you can make the wall perfect and even.

After the applied layer of plaster has dried, you will notice that the wall is rough. Therefore, it is necessary to process it by applying a finishing putty, and then grinding it using fine sandpaper.

This method of leveling the wall is not without advantages. This does not reduce the usable area of ​​the room. There are also disadvantages, which are expressed in the need for preliminary cleaning of the walls and the laboriousness of the process, which leaves behind a large amount of debris and dust.

A separate moment of wall alignment is the alignment of the corners of the walls, which, no doubt, everyone considers the most problematic areas. To carry out these complex works, an angle trowel, level and other auxiliary tools are used. Aligning corners is laborious and difficult. This job requires experience and knowledge. In order for the mortar to set faster in the corners of the walls, a little gypsum is added to the mixture.

How to eliminate significant wall irregularities

It is not easy to level the walls in rooms with large drops and terrible curvature of the walls. In this case, it is best to use specific structures that must first be mounted and then sheathed with drywall.

This method has several disadvantages, the main of which is the reduction of usable area. There are also positive aspects in the method: no preliminary work is carried out to prepare the surface, in addition, communication lines are easily hidden inside the installed frame and a layer of sound and heat insulating material is laid.

This method has more positive qualities than negative ones, so it is often used. First you need to install the frame, and then sheathe it with drywall.

This is how blockages are leveled, which do not disappear anywhere, but only hide under the sheathing material. This is not very convenient for small rooms, because this way it becomes even smaller.

Preparing walls for wallpapering

Any repair that apartment owners begin begins with the question of leveling the walls for wallpapering. For wallpaper, as for other decorative coatings, a smooth surface is required, which must be prepared.

With minor irregularities, the walls are treated with ordinary putty. The work is carried out using a spatula designed for jointing cracks and their putty. It is most convenient to use two spatulas with medium sizes.

If the amount of work is large, putty is diluted in the basin so that you do not have to jump up and down and back. If you need to cover up small holes and crevices, use a small bowl.

When performing large volumes of work, the mixtures are bred using a drill and a special nozzle for it.

If it is necessary to apply a thick layer, the surface is treated with a special starting putty before that. If you follow the correct application technology, putty must be applied in several steps, applying each layer after the previous one has dried. Most often, three layers are laid, the last of which is done with finishing putty for final work. After drying, the entire surface of the wall is cleaned with sandpaper.

The exception to the rule is not the bathroom.

The most common reason for leveling the walls in the bathroom is the type of upcoming finish. If you are going to lay tiles, then you will need knowledge of how the walls are properly aligned for laying tiles. Work performed with tiles is considered a responsible and serious process that must be approached competently, and in this case it is unacceptable to lay tiles on an uneven wall. Therefore, before starting the main process, think about how to level the walls in the bathroom using existing technology.

Ceramic tiles can only be laid on a flat wall, because if you ignore this condition, the results will be disastrous: the masonry will bulge out and the appearance of the room will be spoiled. It is best to level the walls with beacons.

Walls with beacons have more strength, because when all the leveling work is completed, the beacons do not get out of the walls, as a result of which they support the plaster. If the work is done using plaster triangles, excellent 90-degree angles are obtained.

The plaster is applied using the "throwing" principle, so a trowel is used. First, cover a small section of the wall. After applying the mixture, it should dry, after which the excess parts of the solution that go beyond the beacons are cut off. Water is added to the cut solution and they again need to wipe the following areas.

When the plaster dries, the walls must be primed, and tiles should be laid on top of the ground coating. Thanks to the primer layer, there is a better adhesion of the adhesive solution and the base.

Knowing several options for leveling walls, using all the subtleties and tricks of this process, you can come to good results. Plasterers, masters of their craft, rely on a quality surface, the correct composition of the plaster and precise beacons.

If you strive for a better life, you will not live anyhow. Human housing must be designed properly: the walls must be even, the decor must be beautiful, the furniture must be suitable. By creating such conditions in your home, you will feel how your life has become more comfortable. It is better than daily contemplation of crooked corners and collapsed walls. Ideally smooth walls should become the norm. This ideal must be striven for, since curved walls cannot be hidden not behind high-quality and expensive wallpaper, nor chic furniture.