Hi,
Please excuse the newbie question, but I've spent about two hours Googling for an answer to this, and I'm none the wiser...
I'm trying to fix some shelves to my kitchen wall. Should be simple? Possibly not -- I can't for the life of me figure out the wall construction.
My property is a flat, in the UK, built somewhere around 2000. Most of the interior walls in the flat are stud walls (plasterboard over metal studs, as far as I can tell). But the kitchen wall, whilst interior in terms of the building itself, forms a separating wall between my flat and my neighbour's flat. And this wall appears to have a different construction.
I initially assumed it would be a plasterboard stud wall, the same as the rest. But I got nowhere fast when trying to drive a plasterboard screw into it -- it went about 1/2in, then hit something hard, and would go in no further (and made a bit of a mess of the wall).
I investigated the wall's construction by taking the cover off a power outlet in that wall and having a look. From what I can tell, the wall is constructed of:
a) a thin layer of what I assume must be plaster b) behind that, a 1/2in layer of something that resembles plasterboard (and is soft enough to screw into easily enough) c) behind that, a 1/2in layer of something that *looks* the same as the plasterboard, but is much harder (and cannot easily be screwed into) d) behind that, there appears to be a gap/cavity
So, what I can't work out is: what the hell is layer (c)? And, more importantly, what sort of fixings can/should I use to fix shelves to this wall?
Any advice would be appreciated.
Cheers,
Dave