How much do you pay for drywall guys?

[Jon K.]

How much do you pay for drywall guys to repair a wall or ceiling?

I got an estimate of nearly $2000 for part of 1 room. Absurdity.

That's when there's less than $50-75 in actual supplies (drywall, tape, mud, paint) needed for the job.

I had an amateur suggest that he could do it for a few hundred. Amateur's might screw it up, but it is tempting to save that much money.

What's the top amount you would pay per square foot? What's reasonable?

[Tim Croft]

Hey Jon... I get 24 s sheet to hang . Tape , sand walls and texture ceilings ... Labor only ... Ive done over 500 houses... Little 2 sheet jobs you don't do by the sheet... You'd never make a days pay ... Id charge half a day ... $ 150.. $ 300 for a full day... For a little job like 2 sheets... You cant drive to more than 2 of them in a day. They are usually a pain and you should get a decent hourly rate to fix what ever it is ... 30- 40 an hour is reasonable to charge for small jobs... Thats in Massachusetts ... Union rates are almost 40 with full benefits.., hope this helps ....Tim

[George P.]

Originally posted by Joe Delia:

Originally posted by George P.:
rob, i need that guy's number....

i have a great mexican guy (not iligal, been here for 20 yrs), who charges $1/sq. ft. does amazing work (did my basement), but he hates doing small jobs. he wants to do at least one day worth of work, or his guys will screw him over and still get paid.

drywall is cheap, but experience is important. or it will look like crap.

I'm actually about to head to my job to get bids. I'd love your guys number, it's a large job. Please PM me.

did you leave a message on my google voice number?

will PM you the guy's name..

[Mike Franco]

If you call 10 different contractors, you'll have a feel for the right price.

Drywall is really hard to screw up. It is forgiving because it is easily patched up with joint compound and sanding.
For my rental, I did all the patching and skim coating myself, and got a nice smooth wall. So I wouldn't hesitate to hire one of the cheaper bids or do it myself.

As always, if you hire a cheap bid, be prepared to supervise. Have a good lamp handy so you can easily see imperfections in the drywall installation. Check out youtube and familiarize yourself with drywalling.

Texture is for tract homes that need drywall to be installed quickly and cheaply. That's why it's so common. All the million dollar custom homes in my area have smooth walls.

[David Niles]

I wouldnt go as far to say drywall is hard to screw up, I've walked into many the weekend warrior butcher jobs.....lol.
While yes it can easily be patched and mud back up, if your taking the time to hang new board, defeats the purpose when your filling holes and short cuttings with buckets of mud.

Agree with J on the texture, only time we spray or texture is to hide someone elses mess.

[Mike Hurney]

Tim Croft
How far do you travel?
Mike

[Rob K.]

Originally posted by Scott W.:
Rob K hey rob, just curious, do you pay your cheap guy by the hour or by the job?

I usually pay him by the job. He will give me a range up front. He's kind of timid about pricing and usually comes in the middle of the range. He recently quoted me $600-800 for a job and he said it was more work than he thought and charged me the $800. Other times, he has said he had to put on an extra coat of paint when he wasn't expecting to and I've paid him more. I did pay him by the hour once to finish a punchlist and it was $15 per hour.

He's done so many jobs for me that I tell him to just do the work and bill me when it's done, but he prefers to look at it first and give me a range.

I have a work comp policy since the guys that I hire are ringers. The insured guys are always priced way higher, so it's worth it for me to buy insurance and get the cheaper labor.

[George P.]

rob, pm me his contact info, plz.

[Joe Delia]

Originally posted by George P.:

Originally posted by Joe Delia:

Originally posted by George P.:
rob, i need that guy's number....

i have a great mexican guy (not iligal, been here for 20 yrs), who charges $1/sq. ft. does amazing work (did my basement), but he hates doing small jobs. he wants to do at least one day worth of work, or his guys will screw him over and still get paid.

drywall is cheap, but experience is important. or it will look like crap.

I'm actually about to head to my job to get bids. I'd love your guys number, it's a large job. Please PM me.

did you leave a message on my google voice number?

will PM you the guy's name..

Yes i'm impatient haha

[Steve K]

Originally posted by J Scott:

Originally posted by Steve K:
A drywall guy once told me that a quick way to calculate a whole house worth of work is to multiply the living sq footage by 3.5 then divide that by 48 sq ft ( 12 ft drywall ) and then multiply times per sheet cost.

This is probably more applicable for new construction or full gut jobs.

I hate telling people this (and left it out of my book) because things like open floor plans and high ceilings can mess up the calculations, BUT, the rule of thumb that I use is to divide the living square footage by 9 and that's how many 8' sheets you need.

Given that I pay about the same you do (about $30/sheet), if you multiple the living square footage by about 3.4, you should be able to get a price estimate.

As an example, for a 1300 sf flood house (torn down to the studs) I recently did, my 5 second estimate for sheetrock was 1300 * 3.4 = $4420. The actual bids I received were between $4300 and $4700.

But again, there's lots of possibility for variation here, so be careful with this method...

Agreed. Same as your method it's just a quick estimation.

Are your subs using mostly 8' sheets? In new builds we're using mostly 12' which skews that 3.4 number upwards a little bit, but pretty minimal in the grand scheme of things.

As an aside I just finished planning a base model home that is coming in at $64 per sq ft including soft costs. Very similar to what you're forecasting, although it seems like you're adding nicer features.

[Kevin Lochen]

Around Chicago most guys will charge around 40-45 per sheet, that's hung and taped and material. I don't think I've heard of anything less than that, but may e residential charges less, I always stand the sheets up, that way you have one vertical seem to tape, not one horizontal and 2 vertical when you lay it down. It saves all the trades time! Try it

[Jon K.]

I got another guy quote me $800 today for 1 big drywall sheet, 1 patch, texture, and paint. Better price than the original guy that quoted me, but I'm hoping to get more towards what you guys pay. I've got a call in to a 3rd guy. Even if it's $400 or $500, that seems fair to him, and tolerable for me. I've got sort of tall ceilings.

[Mike Jones]

I've been doing it on my own with laborers, I try them out a day and if their work is bad, next! seems to work ok but you would need all yer own tools, truck etc. Definitely saves $$ big time, house I'm rehabbing now was a full gut job and all the drywall costs with labor ran me about $1400. You have to have lots of patience for this to work though.

[Chris K.]

This topic is right on time for me thanks. This will help if I decide not to do it myself If anyone has any referances in Baltimore MD please let me know.

[Johann Jells]

Can anyone comment on what the cost would be for slamming 1/4 drywall over ancient plaster walls? Material is less than discussed above but install can be more complex. The only previous time I've had this done was part of a much larger job so I don't have a comp for it. I know, gutting would better, but old lath and plaster is a huge mess, much harder and nastier than gutting drywall. That and the main charm of this place is the magnificent old casings, which would be hard to salvage in a gut.

I've been trying for months to connect with a "drywall only" contractor, I've heard that those guys can really do it well, fast and cheap, as opposed to every contractor who kinda gets it done eventually. So can I, but it takes me a while. Even Mike Holmes (TV contractor) admits the specialists lay waste to his guys. On the other hand, If I did this apartment myself, I'd be MUCH better by the time I was done!

[Colleen F.]

In any case it is worth not doing it yourself. I always found taping and mudding tedious and there are people who are good at it and those who are not so make sure you hire someone with real experience. we got a 2 k quote on a small 3 br in NJ so I have to run those formulas to see if it was a good quote.

[J Scott]

Originally posted by Johann Jells:
Can anyone comment on what the cost would be for slamming 1/4 drywall over ancient plaster walls?

We often do this in our old houses...

Cost is about the same as what I mentioned in my first post for large areas...

[Jon K.]

Originally posted by Mike J:
I've been doing it on my own with laborers, I try them out a day and if their work is bad, next! seems to work ok but you would need all yer own tools, truck etc. Definitely saves $$ big time, house I'm rehabbing now was a full gut job and all the drywall costs with labor ran me about $1400. You have to have lots of patience for this to work though.

Wow. Good deal. Where do you find laborers?

Another guy I called today said $500. It's not a very big repair, but that's a pretty good price to get this done with and out of my hair.

[Mirjalol Mamaraimov]

What price for such repairs.

Please write the real price.

view from the other side

or a

[George P.]

@Mirjalol Mamaraimov , now you are showing off!! lol

how much does something like that cost? a few grand?

[Gilbert Dominguez]

I have been working on rehabs and remodels for over 30 years and to make it worth the drywall worker's while and not pay too much for the kind of repairs you mentioned it should not cost you over a couple of hundred dollars even to have a real professional do it. Should also not be more than a couple of hours of their time. They will usually carry enough materials on their truck or van to be able to do most repair jobs and should be included in their cost or fees. Drywall materials are cheap its the experience and professional installation that you are paying for. Its more of art form and dependent on skill. You will find allot of amateurs offering to do this kind of work but you will always get what you pay for. Yes you may get lucky and someday bump into an amateur that does really good work at a really cheap price but for right now do not count on it until the day you discover someone great. For one offs depend on professionals at first. You can refuse to pay them until their quality is up to snuff where as if you hire your own guy you have to pay them regardless or you can be facing problems with the local labor board. 

[Randy E.]

Originally posted by @Jon K.:

How much do you pay for drywall guys to repair a wall or ceiling?

I got an estimate of nearly $2000 for part of 1 room. Absurdity.

That's when there's less than $50-75 in actual supplies (drywall, tape, mud, paint) needed for the job.

I had an amateur suggest that he could do it for a few hundred. Amateur's might screw it up, but it is tempting to save that much money.

What's the top amount you would pay per square foot? What's reasonable?

 Some guys give absurd quotes for first-time jobs.  Just as we investors want the lowest price when we buy a house and the highest amount when we rent/sell, many contractors/laborers want as much as they can get.  When they don't know you, I've found they sometimes submit absurdly high initial bids.

Last week, I needed a last minute guy to do some work that had lingered (my fault mostly) on a project.  A friend of my mechanic recommended his brother and friend, and I gave them a punch list of the work.  Their estimate was $1300, which was ridiculously high for what I wanted done.  I took off a couple of items, and a little negotiating later, we settled on $300.

Also, some guys think all landlords have deep pockets.  I tell guys all the time that I don't mind paying a fair wage, but if they're looking for an outsized profit they should go elsewhere.  I tell them I'm a little-guy investor and as such, I'm not in the market for vastly overpriced workers.

Back to your question.  Around my area, drywall guys make $12-$20/hr.  I estimate how long it will take to do the job, then I offer that as my first counter.  I don't mind paying for an extra hour or three to allow for travel time and a time miscalculation from me.  But, if the bid seems absurdly high, I tell them "your bid is simply way too high for me to consider.  You need to give me a lower bid now before I'll even consider negotiating."

[Mirjalol Mamaraimov]

I want to make such repairs.

[Andy Ballester]

Here is what I'm guessing what happened. He maybe a contractor with a  lot of work, with some big jobs lined up. You call him over for a small job that may not be worth his time and effort. He throws out a high number and my guess is probably 5% of the people may say sounds good when can you start , and he makes big money for a small job .

[Sam Dal]

Can someone review this quote my contractor is providing in NYC? There were some external problems that caused 2ft of drywall from the floor of the basement to develop humidity and needs to be replaced. Total square footage of replacement drywall will be 275sq feet. The plan is to cut 4x8 boards by half and install them and use basic wood molding throughout the basement which is about 1000sq feet

$4000 for drywall replacement, plaster of about 5-6 inches wide and moulding

$2000 for paint if we want that

Insulation will be $800 extra if we want to do it - they plan to use fiberglass insulation and push them up all the way into the ceiling

Does this look reasonable, even for NYC? I'm considering doing the work myself getting a helper from a paint store or something

[Jassem A.]

@Sam Dal

The estimate seems high. It wouldn't be hard to do yourself and the materials would cost around $200-300.  It doesn't sound like more than a day or two of work.