Going to put up drywall - should I take down existing drywall?

[goatcat]

I have a townhouse, a total of 88 sqm on two floors, which I am completely renovating. I'm now considering what to do with the walls. Currently, they consist of raw wood paneling + 13 mm drywall. I am thinking of adding new 13 mm drywall since I have previous bad experiences with wallpapering, etc. I believe new drywall will provide a perfect surface in every way.

Should I then:
1) Tear down all existing drywall, and then put up new
2) Place new drywall over the existing.

Of course, it's more work to tear down the existing drywall, but it "feels" better to do it from scratch, and it will also make it easier and save time for the electrician who will rewire the entire house. Since I'm already blowing out the whole house, it seems like just an extra day's work to remove the old drywall.

Am I off track? Is it madness to tear down the old drywall first?

 

[Sjöhästen]

Have you considered using renovation wallpaper instead of installing new drywall?

 

[byggbg]

How bad is the existing plaster? Even if you apply new plaster, you'll still need spackling, so can't the existing one be saved with a thorough sanding and spackling?

 

[goatcat]

There will be a lot of electrical wiring and even some water pipes running through the walls, so no matter how I proceed, the existing layer will become so unsightly and tracked that I consider it too time-consuming to restore it, and it won't have the same finish as with new drywall.

I'm aware that new drywall requires joint compound on the seams, but I've done that before and think it's a completely different thing than patching entire walls.

 

[Bernieberg]

If you're redoing all the electrical and were planning to install new gypsum anyway, I would have torn down the old one. It provides good flexibility when placing new pipes, like here from my own project.

 

[ricebridge]

The advantage of preserving the old plaster (besides reducing landfill waste) is that it provides a bit more soundproofing, which is never a bad thing. Place the new plasterboard with staggered joints on top of the old one and use screws that penetrate both the new and old plaster.