Drywall Installation and Finishing

New Board, Finished With the Next Repair in Mind

Chicagopetshow hangs and finishes drywall on remodels, additions, garage conversions and full interiors across Riverside. The work is ordinary in the sense that hanging board is a well understood trade, and we do it the ordinary correct way: board run perpendicular to framing where it makes sense, joints staggered, screws set to a proper dimple without breaking the paper face, and no butt joint landing where a light fixture will wash across it if we can help it.

What is slightly less ordinary is that we think about the repair that has not happened yet while we are texturing. A wall that gets a documented, reproducible texture is a wall somebody can patch invisibly in five years. A wall that gets whatever came out of the gun that afternoon is a wall that will show every repair for the rest of its life.

Level 4 and Level 5

The finish levels are an industry standard and they are worth understanding because they are the main thing that changes the price of a finishing job.

Level 4 is the normal residential standard. Tape embedded and coated, two separate coats over the tape and over fastener heads, sanded smooth. It is what almost every textured wall in a tract house has under the texture, and it is entirely adequate under orange peel or knockdown.

Level 5 adds a thin skim coat of compound over the entire surface, so the whole wall has the same porosity and the same reflectivity rather than alternating between paper face and dried compound.

The rule we use is straightforward. If the surface is going to be textured, level 4. If it is going to stay smooth, or take a satin or semi gloss sheen, or face a west window that will rake sunlight across it every afternoon, level 5. Those are the conditions under which the difference between paper and compound becomes visible as a faint banding that follows the joints, and once it is painted the only fix is skimming and repainting.

Riverside has a lot of west facing walls and a lot of low afternoon sun. We recommend level 5 more often than a shop in a cloudier place would, and we tell people why rather than just quoting it.

Board Types That Actually Matter

Regular half inch board covers most walls and ceilings. Beyond that there are three cases worth spending money on and a great many that are marketing.

Type X, the fire rated board, is required on the garage side of a garage to house wall and ceiling assembly. This is a code requirement, not a preference, and it also demands that the assembly stays continuous. We see it breached constantly by people who cut an opening for shelving or a pull down attic ladder and patched it with regular board. If we find that on a job, we will point it out.

Moisture resistant board belongs in bathrooms, though not in a shower surround, which wants cement board or a proper tile backer instead.

Ceiling board, the sagging resistant half inch product, is worth it on ceilings framed at wider spacing. It is not worth it anywhere else.

Everything else, including most of what gets sold as premium lightweight, is a matter of what is easier to carry up a ladder rather than what performs better once it is on the wall.

Texture, Documented

When we texture new work we record what we used: the compound, how far it was thinned, the tip, the pressure, and on knockdown the dwell time before the flattening pass. We leave that with the homeowner.

This sounds fussy. It takes two minutes and it converts a future patch from a guessing exercise into a setup you can dial in on the first test board. If somebody else does the repair in five years, they will still have it.

Popcorn Ceilings

Removal is a common request and there is one question that comes first. If the house was built before the early eighties, the ceiling texture may contain asbestos, and the only way to know is a lab test on a sample. That test is cheap. Scraping without it is not a risk we take and not one we would advise anyone else to take either.

Once a ceiling is scraped it is never flat enough to leave bare. Scraping pulls paper fibres and leaves the old texture’s footprint in the surface. It wants a skim coat and then a texture, usually whatever the walls in the rest of the house wear, so the room reads as part of the same building rather than a renovation.

Getting a Number

Call (951) 515-1943. For new work we want to know the square footage, the ceiling height, whether it is occupied, and what finish level you are after. For a remodel we would rather come and look, because the framing is what sets the real price and nobody describes framing accurately over the phone.