How to Hang Drywall By Yourself

in this video I'm going to show you how to hang drywall by yourself and we're going to do it right now [Music] my number one tip when hanging drywall by yourself don't just don't seriously call a friend call a family member have your significant other help you out you're going to run the risk of hurting yourself whenever you do something construction you're going to run that risk but when you do it by yourself the risk is even higher of course there's a risk in everything that you do if you're like me and you carry 12 bags of groceries into the house because you don't want to make a second trip you can run the risk of hurting yourself that way so why are you even making this video then Matt well somebody like me always does stuff by themselves and it's not because I don't have any friends although I joke about that all the time really the reason is is because I work at a different pace I know a lot of you probably don't put off projects for months at a time just to be able to slow down to make videos along the way but there might be certain things where you like to work at your own pace and you don't want to put somebody through that or maybe you don't want to call somebody and and deal with all that so I'm making this video for all of you that are just gonna do it by yourself regardless and there's probably some of you out there that are saying drywall's easy just do it by yourself whatever sure drywall is easy if you've done it before you know what you're doing but this video is also for people who have never hung drywall before and maybe it's a little intimidating to even pick up a sheet of drywall that's why I'm making this video so a good place to start is how to actually carry a sheet of drywall once you figure out how to maneuver it then it'll be easier when you're actually installing it so the way I like to do it is to use one hand as a balance and one hand carries all the weight so I tend to use my left hand and I pick up the sheet with my arm fully extended like this so most of the weight is actually on my legs not on my arms and then I use my other arm to balance the sheet so go to the middle of the sheet that way it'll be balanced on both ends harmfully extended and lift it and then you can adjust either way but this way once you're carrying it you'll soon realize that although it is heavy it's really not that heavy by the time you get the drywall from the pallet that it's on at the store to the cart into your truck back home and into the house you should be starting to learn how to maneuver the sheets and ultimately that's going to help you install it and make it easier another thing to take into account is the size of the drywall as far as thickness goes half inch is kind of the standard if you want to go thicker for fire code reasons or whatever you want to do you can get 5 8 you can get quarter inch if you're hanging over existing drywall but I use half inch in every room the sheets come four foot by eight foot or by ten foot 12 foot and I think even 16 foot here's where there's going to be some controversy in this video I have a room that's about nine by eleven I'm going to use eight Footers and people are going to say this is nine feet just get a 10 footer cut a foot off of it and you won't have any seams go going this way well that is true but I'm sorry I'm just getting eight Footers for this room the effort that I'm Gonna Save because I'm doing it myself in putting a shorter sheet up here and having a seam over here is going to be totally worth it to me I'm gonna mud and tape and sand my face off in here no matter what two extra seams in the ceiling is not going to be a big deal in fact I'm going to cut these sheets even smaller than that probably about a six foot sheet here three foot sheet here and then that way it'll be even less effort installing these and I've seen people hang 12 foot sheets by themselves ultimately you can do what you want but that's not for me so you figured out how much drywall you need what size you need you've gotten it to your house you figured out kind of how to carry it so now you can install it and the cool thing is you don't need a ton of tools most important ones tape measure a utility knife pencil inch and a quarter drywall screws and a drywall gun this one's cordless which is really nice you don't have to worry about uh cord tripping you up of course it's Ryobi because I love Ryobi it has a little hook that you can just put on your pocket or on your tool belt so that you can hold the sheet up against the wall or the ceiling grab it put a screw in as you'll see the only other tool that really makes it a million times easier is a RotoZip and I'll talk about this a little later on I guess you don't necessarily need this you could use a knife but it would be a nightmare really so you should get one of these if you're doing drywall now we need to figure out where our first piece is going I'm going to start right in this corner I always start with the ceiling it is the hardest part anyways so we'll get it out of the way and you can see the strapping through this plastic it runs this way so I'm going to hang the sheets so that the long way goes this way and four feet comes out this way and I'm going to cut my first sheet so that it's on this piece of strapping half on and then over here where this Mark is that's going to be my next seam because I do still want to stagger my seams so that when I mud it and sand it it Blends in better if I did a seam all the way down here you would probably be able to tell even though we're having a seam all the way this way it's just good practice to stagger seams however you can so I have my measurement here from that wall to where I want to cut it half on I'm going to cut that and I'm going to put the factory end right here so I have a nice Cut and then I can put my other piece to it so let's cut our sheet here's another tool that's really handy t-square instead of having to use a four foot level or a straight edge this sits right on the top and makes a nice square cut one great thing about drywall is it's such an easy material to work with all I got to do mark my measurement 79 and an eighth and I put my t-square right here put my foot on the bottom here to stabilize the t-square my utility knife pick up my sheet just push it like that extend my knife all the way cut through the back side foreign I can use this piece as a cut maybe in that closet it's my first sheet these right here are the secret sauce to hang in drywall by yourself basically going to put them right here against this top plate make sure it's hanging a half inch down from the strapping and this is going to be your friend this is going to be your helping hand when you hang this this sheet you're going to butt it up into here this end will be held up and you can hold it on the other end and screw it into place then you take these out move them wherever you need to you can even put these on the other end put that screw in Loosely and twist it to hold up this side of the sheet if you want to Secret Sauce almost forgot Mark where your strapping is that's important time be careful [Music] I have my sheet locked in to my helpers and I want to make sure I'm Square all right screws in make sure you keep your hand on this until you get plenty of screws in foreign so this first sheet is up I like to put five screws in each piece of strapping and then on the end I like to do six screws just to make sure that seam is going to be secured good obviously there's some kind of dip or something going on here that's why I put multiple screws and you just want to put the screw in just enough so that it'll hold the sheet that one might be even a little too deep just sunk in enough where you can mud over it and sand it and you'll be good but you don't want to break the paper so this room is at a square and you can see I have a gap right there and a gap over here which is fine I decided to split the difference when I put it up there I put it tight against that wall and I had a huge gap here so I decided to hold it away over here and that just means that this Gap is going to get a little bit bigger when I put my next sheet up that'll be fine because I have sheets going up here on the wall I could have cut this over here to make it square but either way if you want to do it is fine and obviously if you have lights or anything in the ceiling you want to Mark those before you put the sheet up I have my diagram right here for where the lights are going and I know where my smoke detector is over here so I can do all that afterwards so for the next sheet I'm going to measure here here 33 and a half 33 and a half that's weird okay I'm not gonna complain I'm gonna cut it about 33 and 3 8 just to give myself a little bit of wiggle room now this sheet I'm gonna do Factory Edge to factory Edge right here nice and I'm going to make sure it's lined up right here and leave a gap over here so that way when I put this piece up that is a nice seam and a mist and I don't like to go too close to the edge this Gap is a little bigger than I wanted that's okay another sheet going there and mud I'm doing this by myself give me a break [Music] and there you go full row and now next one measure from here half on the strapping cut it right there and then move along the same way for the rest of the ceiling put this right here but leave it Loose it's going to be mud in the seam anyways [Applause] foreign by the way if you don't have a drywall gun or you don't want to buy one just for one job you can get one of these dimplers it's the same exact thing it's already preset I just put some electrical tape around the top because the bit tends to pop off sometimes and that would be a lot cheaper than buying a drywall gun just keep that in mind laughs and that is the worst thing ever the tip fell out of this gun so now I'm stranded let's hope I have enough screws in that so from now on backup plan Phillips screwdriver when in doubt go manual imagine hanging all these sheets with it just a hand Phillips screwdriver that'd be fun you can also get one of those guns that have the roll of screws and you can just zing zing zing I haven't had good luck with them though they jam up and in situations like that where they do jam up and you have a full sheet above your head it's not good not good at all and as you go along here be a friend to yourself if you're going to be mutting this and just screw in any of these screws that are sticking down carefully or take out any ones that missed strapping like this one for some reason there must be a hole there I'm gonna have this tiny cut a rip against this back wall in there and there there we go Lefty not bad yes perfect nice and tight all the way down I don't know how I did that oh we can retire our little friends for this job if I put a just in case screw in that one that's how I roll [Music] his friend foreign is done let me show you what I did over here on the end here I had about a six inch piece so I did this in multiple pieces it doesn't really matter because I have a corner seam going right here that I'm going to have to mud and then I'm going to have to bring this seam way out to here so this will basically be all mud out to about here so I figured I'd use up the scraps that I have I had some extra in the basement you can see the date on that this stuff is a little older than the new stuff right here okay moving on to the walls first step pick a wall and mark the studs on the ceiling there's no real Rhyme or Reason to picking a wall but with this one I know that the nailers on each end are a lot smaller than these walls I'm gonna have to take down my fancy schmancy shade here for a little bit I have heard a lot of different schools of thought when it comes to every aspect of drywall just a few of them some people like to hang their sheets vertically which means they'd have a seam right here and right here just two seams and I guess that's good to have less seams but at the same time I like to do it where I hang the sheet like this and if I have a seam it'll be right here and then the other one will be like here just like the ceiling and the reason I do that is because it's a lot harder to make one vertical seam look perfect throughout the entire wall with all of its imperfections of course you could do 10 foot sheets like we talked about earlier and just do one here and then a rip on the bottom and you would just have this one seam and that's fine I just don't like the vertical seams and that's just how I am another thing I've heard is that people like to do the bottom sheet first so they'll sit it on the ground and then they'll take the next one and they'll set it up right on top of that one and in theory that makes sense but with a house that's not perfect nothing's level nothing Square it's never going to work out you're gonna have to rip the top and it's going to be a lot harder to do that than if I was to rip the bottom and that's what I like to do I like to put the top sheet up first and then leave about a quarter inch on the bottom as long as the bottom plate is covered I'm okay with that and then I pry that up to the piece that I put on the top and call it a day that's how I do it that's how I'm gonna do it that's what I'm gonna show you but I guess there's more than one way to skin a cat is there really though weird saying got my first piece cut it's gonna come to right here half on that stud and Factory Edge I'm gonna cut the window out afterwards I'm gonna hang this up and then cut the window out you could cut it out right now if you wanted but I find it to be easier to cut it out afterwards not perfect nothing is in this house now if I put my feet way back like this put some weight on it get some screws in same thing I like to do five screws in every stud have fun this does have this setting by the way you want to be all professional like I'm much slower than a professional so we have our first sheet hung right here and you can see something a little wacky is going on right about there and this is a great example of an imperfection in the wall basically what was happening was this stud and this stud are out further this way than this one so when I started putting screws in they started popping through the drywall just like that right there so what I had to do was put a whole bunch of screws in here and get them to the point where they wouldn't be breaking through the paper like this one and this one and avoiding ones like that so I've gotten it to a point where the drywall just won't move around it looks a little goofy but it's all going to be mudded in anyways you just want to make sure there's not going to be any movement because then these screws will start popping down the line now before we hang this sheet I want to show you how I'm going to cut this out and show you how that RotoZip tool works so when I say RotoZip this is the tool that I'm talking about RotoZip is actually the brand name this is made by Bosch I think it's called a rotary tool or a rotary saw I think that's the official name but I call it a RotoZip because it's easy to remember and it has two different types of bits you have the standard Point bit and then you have these which have a guide tip or a tracing tip what that looks like is these right here this is the guide tip this is the standard one and this is the one I like to use when I'm cutting around plastic boxes for electrical metal boxes for can lights or when you go around framing that way if you use this it won't accidentally cut into the boxes or the framing too much like this one tends to you could still use this one to go around that stuff but if you don't have a lot of experience with a saw like this this one is definitely the way to go it makes it a lot easier so I'm going to change out the bit that's on here and cut out that window by the way you can just use the utility knife and cut this you can cut the back side before you put it up and then cut it here or you can just keep cutting through it until you're through but that will take a while and also in certain situations I like to use my drywall saw this is kind of a small area you just use this to guide the saw just running along here and I like using this where I can because it doesn't create as much dust but I'm going to use the RotoZip because it's going to be real easy just going to open the window and hope that most of the Dust goes outside I'm just going to take my RotoZip with the guide tip and use this framing right here to to guide this saw to cut this drywall out [Music] [Music] [Applause] there you go and you can see that this is marked up a little bit from the tip that would be a lot worse if you were using a standard tip looks pretty good and then we can put this piece up okay now it's time to put the bottom pieces in and I like to stagger my seams if this window wasn't here and the seam was right here I would make sure to stagger the seams it doesn't really matter when there's a window there and sometimes I like to put seams like here under the window because it's a shorter seam and less mud less tape but what I'm going to do is go over here where there's a double stud and that way I can use this full eight foot piece so the first thing I want to do is cut it to length it's already cut to the length I need and then we're going to rip it so we're going to rip the bottom of it so this is where you want to be mindful of where you want your factory seam to land I want it to be here so that factory seam is right here so I want to rip this I want this to be on the bottom and it's a lot harder to cut when it's down here so make sure you flip your sheet accordingly and then I just want to measure in a couple different places 46 and three quarters 46 and a half 46 and a half 46 and a half so I'm going to cut this to about 46 and 3 8 I'll have a small Gap at the bottom that'll make it easier to work with here I don't want to jam it in there and I'll use my knife to make a mark and actually dig it in to the drywall 46 and 3 8 right here and I can take my chalk line and use that slit to hold the line hold that up to this Mark snapalapa now I just make my cut along that line okay so now I want to be mindful of where my boxes are I have one that the sheet is going to go over I'm not going to cut it out right now I'll cut it out with the RotoZip afterwards but I want to mark it so the sheet is upside down so this is actually going to be going here so I'm going to measure to the center of that box 27 and a half and then Mark right here 27 and a half and then from this drywall because that's going to be tight not from the bottom not from the floor 30 and a half measure upside down 30 and a half connect those marks that is the center of my box I just make sure that all the wire is tucked in nice and I'm good to install this sheet make sure all the stuff is out from behind that heat sneak it back there sitting on something another Secret Sauce tool flat bar right in the middle of the sheet hold the sheet tight so it doesn't go over that seam and then gently step on that flat bar and that'll tighten that sheet right up and then you can screw it into place Lefty you want to put screws wherever you can just don't put them too close to this box because then that box will break through and in fact I think that's enough screws for now I'll put one right here just to tighten up that drywall against that box we can cut it out okay now I'm going to take my Rotozip and this is the center Mark for that box I'm just gonna plunge cut this and go about a half inch past this drywall and then find the edge pull this saw out a little bit and then find the outer edge and just right along that box and cut this out [Music] [Music] that's good it also helps to go counterclockwise I gotta tell you though I don't like these required insulated boxes because it holds the drywall out it sits on the flange of these boxes and then when you put screws in [Music] sometimes this drywall will break then you end up having to Mud it that's not bad though [Music] don't forget about your trusty friend if you can do what I just did on the ceiling and on the walls I have all the faith in the world that you can drywall an entire room by yourself again I highly recommend you get some help but if you can't I hope this video helped you out I have a couple more videos on drywalling and taping and mudding I'll leave links to those videos in the description of this one along with a playlist of this entire room Remodel and if you want to see more videos like this you can click hereish and hirish and check those out and if you haven't subscribed yet definitely consider it thanks for watching and we'll see on the next one thank you so my factory seam is right here and I want that to be where my you can't even see that

Channel: The Fixer

Views: 444,075

Keywords: how to hang drywall by yourself, how to hang drywall, drywall installation, diy drywall installation, how to install drywall, diy, hang drywall by yourself, hang drywall, how to drywall, how to hang drywall on walls, how to cut drywall, how to hang drywall on walls by yourself, how to drywall a ceiling, drywall tips and tricks, hanging drywall for beginners, installing drywall, how to drywall a room, hanging drywall, drywall ceiling by yourself, how to hang dry wall

Id: f_70XO2iY_U

Length: 30min 41sec (1841 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 25 2022