If you’ve read my page on drywalling your basement, you know that this is the ONE place I have decided to spend some money and hire a professional. I spoke with two experienced home builders about this step, and they both recommended hiring a professional at this point. Here are the reasons they recommended hiring a professional to hang the drywall and mud and tape the basement walls:
- It’s highly technical, almost an art form that comes with experience
- If you do it on your own and don’t do it well, you WILL see it in the finished product
- The professionals will take 10-20% of the time it would take you
I’ll be honest, I feel I really can do anything if I set my mind to it. And while I feel I could have done a good enough job, numbers 2 and 3 worried me the most. While I do recommend a professional at this step, I really feel that if you have the motivation to save the money and learn how to do it properly, you can probably save in the neighborhood of $2,000. I have a 1,000 square foot basement and I spent $3,700 on hiring a contractor to hang drywall, mud, tape, and texture the basement.
How you make that decision and what you would use that extra money for is a decision you’ll have to make. If you do decide to take the time to do it on your own, I do have some great resources for you. Here’s a series of one of the best videos I’ve seen on what tools you’ll need and how to do it yourself.
This video is nice because it touches on some framing tips if you’ll be hanging the drywall yourself.
I like this video because it shows how to use a drywall lift in order to install the drywall yourself on the ceiling. When I was throwing around the idea of hanging the drywall myself, I honestly thought about getting one of these. Here’s a link to check one out: Home Depot Drywall Lifts.
Godspeed,
Tony
I am curious about the hanging of the drywall with floating walls. I went your recommended route and am having pro finish the drywall. I am curious about where they should be screwing in the drywall near the floor. Should it be into the lowest stud attached to the cement or the stud floating right about it?
I feel like it should be into the floating stud so that the wall is truly floating. I’m not sure and am curious before they install the drywall.
Hey Shawn! Apologies if you’ve already had this completed, but you’re absolutely right! They shouldn’t be screwing the drywall to any of the plates anchored to the floor, just to the “floating” portion of the wall. However, if worse came to worse and you did have some heaving under your foundation, the drywall is not rigid enough to cause problems, it would simply buckle the drywall first. Let me know how the project went!