How to install a socket in lath and plaster. (2023)

Introduction

A step by step guide to installing a socket in a lath and plaster wall.

The same procedure would be used for light switches, fused spurs, etc...

The plaster products I use in this video were...
www.british-gypsum.com/product-range/plaster-products

For a final finish I use Gyproc Easifill 20 Filler
Thistle Bonding coat for the deep fill
Thistle Finishing or multi finish for the skim.

Content

Installing a socket into latin plaster can be tricky, let's get straight into it, so we're going to install a socket in some latham plaster wall.

As you can see here, I've made up a small section of laugh and plaster.

Now you can see the back of it, the plaster poking through the laths.

You can see where all the plasters fall on on the sole plate here that can cause issue, because that can be six or seven inches worth of plaster at the bottom.

There we've got a drill through that sole plate to get our cable through we'll go through that later.

You can see here the plastered overlaps that plus has often got wallpaper on it.

In this example, I'm keeping the paper on this is very dry plaster.

It could have been on the wall for many decades, so we need to be really really gentle when we cut into it.

We want to avoid hitting the stud works when we cut through the lath.

So what I suggest you do is do a little tiny hole where you want to put your socket poke a little bit of bent wire through twizzle.

It around see if it can feel any stud work.

You know the stock is not going to hit the stud, so we offer our plasterboard box to the wall, get it level draw around it with a pencil, and then we can get a spirit level on it, just to make sure that it's nice and straight draw some nice long lines, because some of this plaster might fall away.

So you still got your reference point now: we've got to cut into the wall.

What I would suggest to use is a multi tool.

You can use the plasterboard swords the handheld saws, but they can put a lot of strain on the lath gonna loosen the plaster you want to be as gentle as you possibly can be.

So I'll do this in two steps I remove the plaster.

First, I use an older blade because the plaster really blunts them so we'll cut around our pencil marks and get rid of the plaster first.

So take your time.

There's no rush, pull the lines as close as you possibly can make sure they're, nice and straight, and that will help keep the final socket nice and straight on the wall.

This plaster just wants to fall off the wall, so slowly slowly, gentle gentle, then I just do some little vertical cuts to help me get the plaster off the wall all the time being, very, very gentle! Then we can remove the blast from the cut out to reveal the laths.

We then offer up the box of the hole, be cut out to make sure it fits as you can see here it fits nicely.

You want a tiny little bit of leeway.

You don't want it too tight when you're pushing it through.

Then we change the blade, get a nice sharp wood cutting blade on there, so we can cut through these last cleanly and simply and not put any strain on the last or the plaster I like to get a bit of wire around the last, so I can hold it nice and tight and just take it easy and gently.

It's no rush.

Gentle gentle we're going to cause as little damage to the plaster as possible, holding on to the lath with a little bit of wire gives us something to push against, and it also stops the lath from falling into the void, because these lats can actually be a little bit useful.

We'll see that in a short while the top of the lat's quite tight to the plaster here, so I can't get me a little wiring, so I'm just taking it very gently.

Let the tool do the cutting hardly putting any pressure on it whatsoever, just support it with my fingers when we're almost through, so it doesn't fall into the void.

It's not the end of the world.

If it does, though, and there we go we're through, we've got a whole plasterboard box and we slide our boxer to make sure it fits okay with plasterboard boxes.

You have to be pretty strict how straight they are metal back boxes.

You've got little lugs, so you've got a little bit of movement on the socket.

So here's the view of the back of the wall and these studs are actually held in place.

Quite nice and tight, but in all the walls these can often become very, very loose.

So there's an additional step you can do here is with that little bit of lath that we took out.

We can actually screw it onto the laths to give you a bit more support, it's something for the looks to sit flat against, and even if you didn't do that, this little lump plaster here would need to be removed.

So the lugs of the box can sit tight against the laps, so we can gently remove those little bits of plaster at the back, so our little bit of support can sit flush.

This is all dependent on how thick the plaster is, because there's only a certain amount of depth.

We've got in these plasterboard boxes and I'm using the really deep ones, the 47 mil boxes and just line up the screw with one of the lats, and so we hold the support at the back and then just gently with a handheld screwdriver just screw through the lath and into the support, and it just gives you a little bit of extra strength, use a handheld screwdriver.

You start using a drill driver you're just going to blow right through, so you can see the support held in there nice and tight with a couple of screws.

Plasterboard screws put the box in and see if it's level, it's not quite level here, it's not a great deal of movement on these plasterboard boxes, so we need to get it level just need to knick a little bit off that bottom.

There and you'll notice the more you play around with it, though the more chance the plaster is going to come away- and you can see here the paper's starting to come away a little bit plaster's coming loose I'll, show you what we can do about that, make sure you buy the deep plasterboard boxes, the ones I'm using the 47 millimeters deep.

The smaller size is just too shallow to fit in a latin plaster.

When you cut into laughing plaster there's a good chance you're going to get a bit of damage around the actual socket it's so dry.

A little bit of plaster is going to fall away, sometimes quite a lot of plastic and follower.

Don't worry, it's not the end of the world.

We can fill that get a bit of bonding on it if it's quite deep or some decent surface, filler I'll suggest the products to use at the end of the video.

But if you have got loose plaster behind the paper, don't be tempted just to try and push it back on with the socket it will come away.

So just gently take away the really loose stuff and we can repair this later on to keep this socket nice and steady.

We're going to actually grip fill it in place.

So I need to make support out of a length of thin button, just drill some holes in it level with the lugs in the box, then we can actually screw this support to the wall that pulls the lugs tight against the back of the ball, and it's gonna hold the socket, lovely and tight in place.

While we get the cable in and while we do any repairs to the plaster damage, so we pull the cable through we'll prepare the back box, we'll put a beta grip, fill around the lip of the box and push that in place and pull the little lugs in make sure it's nice and tight tuck, the cable away into the box.

That's quite an important step that, if that cable gets knocked, it will make that box wiggle.

That's one of the reasons why we grip fill it in make sure it's nice and tight to the wall.

So when we do make our connections and such it's less likely to move and crack any plaster and we'll clean away, any residue of the grip fill get rid of that.

We'll have another check for level make sure everything is good and then we'll get that bitter button we prepared earlier and we'll screw that onto the back box and that will pull the lugs in nice and tight and press the box against the wall do make sure you use the right size screw.

So we need quite a long screw because that lugs a long way back now, but not too long because it can bottom out on the back of the box and in doing so when you try and tighten it up, it can actually pull the metal screw thread out of the plastic lug, which can be a real pain and nip it up tight but not too tight.

These are only plastic lugs and they can easily break and snap that's going to hold it nice and tight in place until that grip fill goes off.

Give it a good clean up now get rid of any of the residue of grip fill.

We don't want that on the wall.

That'll look messy, here's a picture of me using this method and a real job, and you can see how it looks when the wall has been plastered here.

We can see the back of the socket.

Now.

That's the one side I put a little bit of support on just as an example to show what you can do: press, lovely and tight against that the other side I didn't put any support on.

Sometimes you don't need to if your plastic is really deep, you won't be able to get that little bit of support on.

You have to rely on the lats that are in place.

This is just a mock-up in the real world.

This cable will be going through this sole plate into the back of the box.

I'll go through that in a short while, once it's all dry, we can remove our support and you can fill that back box.

Now, it's nice and tight.

It's not going to go anywhere that bit of a clean off, and then we can start to make good get some filler on get this as nice and flat as you possibly can take your time doing.

This live a little bit proud.

Then you can sand it flat and you really do want to take your time with this.

You only want to put it on in very thin layers because, when you've got to sand too much off, especially when you've got wallpaper on the wall, where the filler meets the wallpaper, you end up starting to rough on the wallpaper and damage the wallpaper put a bit on and scrape it off and get as flat as you can.

Sometimes this takes several hours to go off, so you can sand it.

It's got to be completely dry before you can sand it.

Otherwise, it'll just burn up.

So this is a slow process takes a long time.

That's why electrician's up and down to the decorator electricians will often do the first fill for the chases and they call it.

The final finish: they'll leave the final finish to the person who's doing the decorating.

But if you take your time, you can get some really good results, but you do have the issue of the lip of the plasterboard box.

The plasterboard box sits proud of the wall, so you get that little tiny plastic lip around it and you can kind of get away with that with kind of white plastic sockets.

If you're using metal flat plate sockets that little plastic lip doesn't look very nice at all, the actual box really needs to be buried and that can be done in latin plaster.

It does involve the wall needing a skim coat and it's a neatest way to get your sockets on, but you really need to recess this little box a bit.

If you just skim over the wall with a plasterboard box, without it being recessed slightly, you've only got a very, very thin layer of plaster over the plastic edges of the box and they can easily crumble and break away, and you often have to do filling afterwards.

It helps massively that the box is actually glued to the wall, so it doesn't move.

Plastering is a real skill which takes an edge to master serve, so you want to be getting a plaster and really not too difficult to do a little small chasers.

But when you're doing larger areas, that's hard work.

But here you go.

You can see I've put my first coat on.

Then it's just a bit of patience.

Then I put a second layer on then you can start working again it's smooth and with a bit of practice you can get some not bad results.

This is nice and flat around the socket and then when it's cut off, but it's not born dry.

I'd like to try and clean the box out and if it's completely solid dry, you can get little chips.

If it's just still a little bit of giving it, you can kind of cut around it with a knife and get it nice and smooth.

You still get a few little nicks, but they'll be hidden by the lip of the socket recessing and grip, filling the socket to give us a solid base to work from, and you can see, we've got a decent depth of plaster there, so hopefully that won't chip off.

But if something does come away, you can just do a little bit of surface fill make good that doesn't look too bad really does it.

So, as we mentioned earlier, we've got to get the cable in and obviously we want to do this before we get the box in, because we can use that little hole to read through and grab the cable.

But this is what we've got to get through.

The cable will run under the floorboard between the joists, but we've got to get through the floorboard we've got to get through the sole plate and we've got to get through that lumber plaster.

It's always at the bottom of latin plaster.

All the residue that fell off when it was originally plastered and that can be really solid and difficult to get through and enjoys, can run in different directions to the wall.

In the first example, the sole plate is going across the joists.

In the second example, the sole plate is going along the joist that can be a little bit tricky because you can't drill through the soleplate to get into the void under the floorboards.

But in that situation you can often get behind the skirting when the wall was originally plastered, it was often not plastered all the way down to the floorboards.

There's a gap for the skirting board and that can be quite useful.

You can angle a drill behind the skirting board and drill down through the floorboard to get your cable up behind the skirting and then you can get it through and into the latham plaster and out the hole for your socket it's a bit of a fiddle on, but it's possible.

Sometimes it's easy to take the skirting board off, get a thin bit of wire down connect it to your cable and pull it through, and here when the soleplate is going across the joists, you can cut out your hole for the socket.

You get a really long drill use a masonry drill, first, just to try and break up that bit of plaster underneath get that out the way.

Sometimes you have to pull a bit out with your hand, so you can get to the sole plate, then change it for a long wood drill and you can drill through the sole plate through the floorboard and then you can fish.

Your cable through.

Obviously, you've got to be careful, you're checking for pipes and wires and everything.

Then this is really dusty and dirty work so make sure you've got your ppe on face mask all that silica dust.

You don't want to be breathing all that in protect your eyes.

You know all the usual ppe stuff, so it can be a bit of a battle getting your cable through, but it's possible.

That's a video in itself, doing that which I think I'll probably do so.

That's how you fish your cable through under the void.

That's how I get a socket mounted in latin plaster wall.

If it all goes terribly wrong and it's just all, the plaster falls off what you can actually do cut a section of the lath out leave the section of lats that are running on leave that section nailed in so cut before the nail.

Then you can mount a metal socket on a noggin, put your plaster board over screw it to the studs and that might get out of trouble that way.

Thanks for watching, I really appreciate your comments and your likes.

I hope to see you on the next video.

Alright, thanks now, bye.