>>19337972You are probably concerned about the surface of the walls of US houses, which are mostly made of wallboard, instead of lathe and plaster.
Wallboard has many advantages over plaster or brick or stone for walls. First of all, we hide all the plumbing, air ducts and electrical wiring behind there, enabling us to put electric outlets and sinks and toilets and heating and cooling vents wherever we want to. Those smooth paintable surfaces look sleek but hide the guts of the house.
Also they are easily patched. We can get to the hidden guts of the house whenever we want to by cutting the wallboard. We can then fix or change whatever we need to and then put in a neat patch which will become invisible after being painted over.
Speaking of ease of cutting, we like to remodel. We can add a bathroom wherever plumbing is near, add or delete a room, move things around in the kitchen etc. as long as the walls we want to take out aren’t load bearing. We minimize the load bearing walls with techniques like struts and steel beams in the first place.
