What to charge to hang and finish drywall
Price it by the square foot of board, and keep hanging and finishing apart. They are two kinds of work with two sets of hours, and a customer who wants a higher level of finish changes one and not the other. Cost the sheets and the finishing materials, add both sets of hours and a trip for each day you come back, pick a price above that, and divide by the square feet.
By TailGateBid. .
Two jobs on one wall
Hanging is over when the last sheet is screwed off. Finishing has only started then: tape, coats, sanding, and a wait between them. This page takes both sets of hours, a box for each, and gives one price for a square foot of the two together.
To see what hanging alone costs you, empty the finishing boxes. To see finishing alone, empty the hanging ones and the sheets. Those are the figures for two lines on a quote.
Name the level of finish on the quote. It is what the finishing hours are for.
From the rooms to the sheets
- Walls: each room's length and width, added and doubled, times the height. Ceilings: length times width. Together they are the square feet of board, and the size of the job.
- Doors and windows stay in the count. The gypsum maker's handbook says they are frequently figured solid.
- Sheets: the square feet, plus your extra for cuts, divided by the sheet. USG lists its half-inch panels from 8 to 16 feet long. Its own estimator leaves waste out, so the extra is yours to type.
- Sheets at what one costs you, plus compound, tape, screws and bead, is the materials.
- Hours of hanging and hours of finishing, at what an hour costs you, plus the materials and the trips, is what the job costs you. Pick a price above it and divide by the square feet.
Work out what a job costs you
Start with the rooms
These boxes turn the rooms into square feet of board and sheets to buy, and put the size, the materials and your hours in the calculator below.
A new row opens when the last one is filled.
It starts at 32, a 4 by 8. A 4 by 12 is 48.
It starts empty: no source we would name gives a figure. Type your own.
Delivered and carried in, if you pay for that.
Every coat, the sanding and the cleanup.
Type the length and the width of a room, and the height of its walls. The square feet show here.
Two people for a day of 8 hours is 16.
A rental, dump fees, a sub.
Type the size of the job to see a price for each square foot.
If you want it checked. Leave it empty if not.
Type your hours and what an hour costs you, or your materials. The answer shows here.
A basement, priced
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
Say two rooms of a basement are 14 by 22 feet and 10 by 12 with 8 foot walls, ceilings too: 928 square feet of wall and 428 of ceiling, 1,356 in all. Say you hang sheets of 32 square feet and add 10% for cuts: 47 sheets. Say a sheet costs you $14, a made-up price: $658, and $120 of compound, tape, screws and bead makes $778. Say hanging takes 20 hours and finishing 26: 46 hours, which at $57.05 an hour is $2,624.30. Say the trips cost you $72. The job costs you $3,474.30. Charge $4,964 and you keep $1,489.70, which is $30 of every $100. That is $3.67 a square foot, hung and finished.
The same basement at five prices
An example with made-up numbers, not a going rate
| Price | You keep | Of every $100 |
|---|---|---|
| $3,861 | $386.70 | $10 |
| $4,343 | $868.70 | $20 |
| $4,964 | $1,489.70 | $30 |
| $5,791 | $2,316.70 | $40 |
| $6,949 | $3,474.70 | $50 |
The level of finish sets the coats
- National Gypsum's guide to the Gypsum Association's levels of finish says that choosing the level matters for planning the products, the crew and the time.
- At Level 4, the guide has tape embedded at every joint and inside angle, then two more coats over the flat joints, one over the inside angles, and three layers over the screw heads and the accessories.
- Level 5 is all of that, and then a skim coat over the whole surface.
- So the same square feet is a different number of passes at each level, and the box for finishing hours is where that difference goes. How long a pass takes you is your own figure: the guide gives none, and neither do we.
A coat, then a wait
- USG says that at 70 degrees and 70 percent humidity its all-purpose joint compound should dry in about 24 hours, and that more humidity or a lower temperature slows it.
- That makes finishing several short days and not one long one, and each of those days is a drive. See what a trip costs you, and count every one of them.
- A cold or damp house stretches the wait. If you bring heat or fans to hold the schedule, they are a cost of the job, and they go in the box for anything else.
What gets missed
- Getting the board in. Sheets carried up a stair or passed through a window are hours before the first one is hung.
- The scrap. Offcuts leave by the load. Put the haul on the quote as a line of its own.
- The small stuff. Compound, tape, screws and corner bead add up. The drywall counter counts the first three from the same rooms.
- The patch. A small repair is mostly the trip and the coats, not the square feet. Price it from its hours, not from a price for a square foot.
- The extra wall. A closet added halfway through is a change. Get it approved in writing before you hang it.
- The deposit. Board is bought before it is hung. Work out a deposit and the sales tax, and check what your state allows before you ask for one.
On a quote
In TailGateBid hanging and finishing go on a quote as two lines charged by the square foot, with the sheets and the pails counted beside them. TailGateBid for drywall has a quote worked through that way, and says how two levels of finish go on one quote as options the customer picks between.
The hour under every figure on this page is what an hour costs you. If that is still a guess, start there.
Where each number comes from
- When this page works out a price for you, it never aims to leave you more than $90 of every $100. TailGateBid's own price suggestions stop at the same place. A price you type yourself can leave more.
- The ladder shows the prices that leave about $10, $20, $30, $40, $50 of every $100. The steps are our choice: a ladder to read across, not advice.
- The box for one sheet starts at 32 square feet, a sheet 4 feet by 8. USG lists its half-inch panels at 4 feet wide and from 8 to 16 feet long, so a 4 by 12 is 48 square feet. Starting at the 4 by 8 is our choice. USG, Sheetrock Brand UltraLight Panels submittal sheet (WB2501), . (our choice, change it)
A calculator works from the numbers you type. Check the answer against your own books.
This page is about one kind of job. TailGateBid works for any trade, and Bid Partner is built to price a job in any of them: how it works for your trade.
Sources
- CGC (a USG company), Gypsum Construction Handbook, chapter 3: Cladding,
- USG, Sheetrock Brand UltraLight Panels submittal sheet (WB2501),
- USG, the notes on its own Sheetrock wallboard estimator,
- National Gypsum, guide to the Gypsum Association's levels of finish (GA-214),
- USG, Sheetrock Brand All Purpose Joint Compound: how long it takes to dry,
Related
- Drywall calculatorRooms into square feet of board, sheets, joint compound, tape and screws, with lines to put on a quote.
- DrywallSquare feet to hang and finish, sheets to buy, and the level of finish named on the quote.
- What an hour costs youIn the example, $25 an hour of pay turns into $57.05 for every hour you can bill.
- Trip and minimum chargeIn the example, a job 25 minutes away costs $93.92 before any work is done. See what your smallest job costs with the trip in it.
- Deposit and sales taxOn a sample quote, 7.25% of $2,035.00 is $147.54 of tax, and a 10% deposit on the total is $225.75.
On a TailGateBid quote hanging and finishing are two lines by the square foot, so a change in the finish changes one price and not the other.
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