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For drywall: the square feet, the sheets and the level of finish

Hanging, taping, finishing, texture and patches: drywall is measured by the square foot of wall and ceiling, bought by the sheet, and finished to a level the quote should name. TailGateBid carries all three on a quote your customer signs on their phone.

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The work

Hanging board on walls and ceilings. Taping and finishing the joints, the corners and the screw heads. Texture, or a smooth wall ready for paint. Repairs: a patch, a cracked seam, a ceiling after a leak. And the scrap, which has to go somewhere.

How drywall is measured

  1. Walls: the distance round the room times the height. Ceiling: length times width. Together they are the square feet of board.
  2. Doors and windows frequently stay in the count. The gypsum maker's own handbook says estimators figure them solid, with large picture windows and large door openings as the exceptions: CGC (a USG company), Gypsum Construction Handbook, chapter 3: Cladding.
  3. Add your extra for cuts, divide by the square feet in the sheet you hang, and round up. USG lists its half-inch panels at 4 feet or 54 inches wide and from 8 to 16 feet long: a 4 by 8 sheet is 32 square feet, and a 4 by 12 is 48.
  4. For the finishing, the same handbook counts, for each 1,000 square feet of board, about 370 feet of joint tape, and about 1,000 screws on walls framed 16 inches apart.
  5. Joint compound: USG says to expect about two 4.5 gallon pails of its lightweight ready-mixed compound for each 1,000 square feet.
  6. Name the level of finish. The Gypsum Association's levels run from 0, board left as it was hung with no tape, to 5, a skim coat over the whole surface; Level 4 is the one typically specified for smooth walls under flat paint: National Gypsum's guide to the levels.

An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate

Say the room is 12 by 14 feet with 8 foot walls, and the ceiling is boarded too. The walls are 416 square feet and the ceiling 168: 584 square feet of board. Say you hang 4 by 8 sheets, 32 square feet each, and add 10% for cuts: 21 sheets. At 370 feet of tape for each 1,000 square feet, that is 217 feet of tape. At two 4.5 gallon pails for each 1,000, it is 5.26 gallons of compound, so 2 pails.

A bedroom addition, worked through

Sample

Sample Drywall Co.

Bedroom addition, 12 by 14 feet: walls and ceiling

  • Board hung, walls and ceilingQty 584 square feet$379.60
  • Taped and finished to Level 4Qty 584 square feet$642.40
  • Drywall sheets, 4 by 8 feetQty 21$336.00
  • Joint compound, 4.5 gallon pailsQty 2$44.00
  • Scrap board hauled awayQty 1 load$95.00
Subtotal
$1,497.00
Sales tax (7.25%)
$27.55
Total
$1,524.55

Deposit due on approval: $152.46

Before you ask for a deposit on work at a home, check what your state or province allows.

Only you see this part. Your customer never does.

What it costs you
$940.50
What is left for you
$556.50

You keep about $37 of every $100

A sample with made-up prices. They are not a going rate. Hanging and finishing are two lines by the square foot, so a customer who wants a higher level of finish changes one line and not the other. The sheets and the pails are counted as you buy them, and the scrap goes by the load. Sales tax is on the two lines ticked as taxed, the materials: 7.25% of $380.00 is $27.55. A 10% deposit, $152.46, is due on approval. At these made-up costs the job leaves $556.50, about $37 of every $100.

What TailGateBid does for a drywall contractor

  • Two finishes, two prices

    Level 4 or Level 5? Put each on the quote as an option with its own price and mark the one you recommend. The customer picks one and signs on their own phone, and the option they picked is on the quote they signed. How options and signing work.

  • A draft from photos of the room

    Take a few photos of the framed room, or of the wall that needs a patch, and tell Bid Partner in a sentence or two what the job is. It is the AI tool in TailGateBid, and it answers with a draft quote: amounts worked out, prices from your rates. A price that is its own and not yours carries the word "Typical" until you replace it, and your figure is the one used after that. Check every number. The customer gets nothing until you press Send.

  • The deposit, the extra wall and the invoice

    Board is bought before it is hung: a deposit can be due when the customer approves, and its invoice is made for you. If they add a closet or a second ceiling once you have started, it goes on a change order they approve by link before you do it. The job waits for its day on the schedule, and the final invoice takes the deposit off and adds the change order.

  • A drywall company website

    Your account brings a website with it, hosted at no extra cost. List hanging, finishing, texture and repairs in your own words, show a ceiling before and after once that customer has agreed, and let a visitor send a request with photos of the room. The reviews you approve go on it too. What the website holds.

The price of a square foot

Hung or finished, it is your number. The job price calculator builds it from your hours, what an hour costs you and the board, and shows what each price would leave you. It can give the answer for each square foot.

Then put the price on paper: what goes on an estimate, in order, with one filled in.

This page is about one trade. TailGateBid works the same way for any other, and Bid Partner is built to price a job in any of them: how it works for your trade.

Sources

Related

Measure the next room and quote it before the board is ordered.

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