[autx790]

I'm getting ready to throw up some drywall on my walls/ceilings (it was nasty going down). The house is 172 years old so the walls aren't the smoothest (but close enough). The ceilings are 10ish feet high and the rooms are about 14x14 with several tall windows in each. I'll be covering about 1300sqft

I'm planning to buy a drywall lift as I'll be doing this solo for the most part. Just wondering if it's worth the investment to buy the flatbox finishers i've seen on youtube. I also plan to get a banjo for taping. I've done a lot of drywall/plaster repairs (not talking nail holes) but I'm still a little rusty. I imagine these tools take some getting used to as well and could be a pain in clean up; so is it worth it to buy the finish tools, or would you expect to get used to doing it the old fashion way pretty quick? Would it take much longer if you don't use the finish tools?

 

[autx790]

Thanks sdsester. The jack I plan to buy and then sell on craigslist after i'm done. There was one local for $110 on there and it sold imediately. So i figured i'd buy a well reviewed on on amazon for $170 and sell it when i'm done for $120 or so. Because I wont be doing all the drywall in a few days, i'd like to be able to take my time and the rental costs would be more than just buying and reselling.

I've straighted out the wall that will hold my kitchen cabinets, but the rest really aren't too bad. I'll put furring strips where needed if i find some that are far out of line. I'd rather not buy the tools but if it would make the job that much easier and faster, it may be worth it to me and then just sell them when i'm done.

I am hoping to get into restoring old houses (just trying to figure out how to manage it without having a builders license) in the near future, but I need to get mine a little further along. The taper I'm looking to get is the homax which is about $35 on amazon i think. Maybe it's best to get proficient doing it by hand anyway, seems like a good skill to have.

 

[autx790]

thanks mr 12. You're right, people let a lot of things go when the house is so old. Especially around here...people will cram bathrooms into the smallest spaces. Funny thing is, when I bought this house, the majority of the house didn't have the original plaster, and they didn't fill it with drywall. They decided 1/4 plywood would be the material of choice. Couldn't really tell it wasn't drywall till you got into it a little. Maybe y'all are right and rent would be a better option for the lift. I have two rooms that are roughly 14x14 and one that is about 20x18 (including bathroom, bedroom, closet). One I'm going to leave the beams exposed in, so i'll just have to figure the best way to do that. Probably going to screw 2x2s along the beam and then the drywall to that (between the studs)

Thanks Mike, i'll get some good hand tools and do it the old fashioned way. I had thought about these tools cause I held out forever on buying a nail gun and boy was I glad after. Tools are fun, but theres something about doing things by hand thats got reward to it. I'll do some investigating on mud types. I have the type with green lid which I think i saw was good for taping but not so much as the finish (I think maybe i saw that in a post you did on another page).

 

[autx790]

Thanks for the info! I'll probably get the collated screw gun at Home Depot, and will pick up the mud mixers as well.

GBR, I do plan to buy the lift and that Homax taper, but i'm going to stick with the old fashion way to do the finishing. i'm not sure what the difference is with hot mud, but it's pretty hot here so I guess you can say it will be hot mud Whats your tip good sir?

 

[autx790]

I swear I replied to this but it didn't seem to take.

Thanks for the info! It's gonna take me a little bit to digest it all. I used to have a friend in Columbia that worked for Tucker materials but i'm living in Charleston now. I was going to go to HD to get my materials and couldn't find any suppliers here in town, but i've since found a couple that I will check out today or tomorrow. Just need to figure out how best to estimate the size and amount of drywall I need. Do you think 5/8" gives a worthwhile benefit in sound reduction? I'm thinking to use that on the ceiling and maybe exterior walls. Yesterday I ordered my lift, homax banjo and a sander that can hook to my shop vac. I'm not sure if i'll order that flat box. I've never seen one on craigslist here for sale so i'm not sure how much i'd be able to get in resale when I'm done and I dont know if I can shell out another $350 right now. But give me a day into mudding and we'll see how I feel then.

 

[autx790]

Thanks...I did my best to estimate the amount i'll need and any left over I can just save and use for a room upstairs i'll need to refinish. I'm going to get 100 sheets of 5/8" 4x12. The guy at the store said they only have the heavier mud in the cans and that i will need 1 bucket for every 10 sheets and the same for rolls of tape. Does this sound about right? Should I go somewhere else to be able to get the two different kinds of mud?

 

[autx790]

Well I finally got all the drywall hung (88 sheets of 12ft boards). I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to hire out for the finishing. I'm getting everthing from $9/board to $0.57/sqft. I dont really have $2500 to spend on labor right now for something I think I could do. Though it would be nice and much faster to have someone else do it. My question now is, I have a lot of joints where there is a tapered edge butting up to a cut piece. Do the flat boxes still work well for a joint like this, or are they made to only work on like-edges?

 

[autx790]

great, thanks for the info! Sorry, I didn't equate the $9/board to sq ft pricing. the $2500 is about what I was getting but someone had said he'd do $9/board which was a lot cheaper. Doesn't matter much though, once he saw the job, that price didn't stick. Which I could understand. I'm still torn trying to figure out if i should tackle this my self. I know I could do it, but I'm wondering if it might take a lot longer than I think. Mostly cause of the exposed beams in one room, 10ft ceilings, and a 28ft tall stair well. It would be real nice to have it painted before thanksgiving.