How to Hang Drywall on a Wall

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm James, with JNC Home Repair. Today, I'm going to show you how to hang drywall. The first thing you want to know about hanging drywall, is determining whether or not you're replacing all of the drywall in the room, or maybe you just want to replace a section of it. If you're replacing a section, what you need to do, is you need to determine what the thickness is, of the drywall. This right here, is typical half inch, dry wall. This is usually probably pretty common. As far as being in a house, older homes usually have a five eights drywall, which is a little bit thicker, but as with everything else, as time goes on, materials get a little bit thinner. They get a little bit smaller, and typical these days, most dry wall is done with half inch. Basically, the basic installation procedure for installing drywall, is a good rule of thumb is, let's say you're installing dry wall in a whole room. Let's take for instance, this is a sheet of drywall. They come in four by eight sheets. When you install it, you don't want to install it vertically. You don't want to install it up and down, like this, because every one of your seams, you're going to have to float up and down, every four feet, and that means you're going to have to be up and down a ladder all day long, trying to float all of these long seams, from top to bottom. What you do, is you flip your sheet sideways, horizontally, like this, and then you install your drywall. That's going to keep all of your seams right up in here, right in the middle of the wall, and it's actually going to be stronger, because it's actually going to be able to screw to more studs, than if you were to install it, just like this. The first thing you're going to do, is you're going to need to cut your piece of drywall, depending on what your measurement is. Most of the people, if you're replace all of it, you're going to start with four by eight sheets, and you're just going to start putting them up, as fast as you can put them up, and fill in as much as you can, and then you'll come back in later, and you'll fill in the small spots, and you'll cut in the small spots. The best way to cut drywall, is you're going to need a basic razor knife. I like this type of razor knife, because you can quick change the blade real fast. It's just like a lock blade knife. It won't close on you. I like this type. You're also going to need a pencil, and you're going to need some kind of straight edge. The easiest way to cut drywall, is you run whatever your mark is. You go ahead and you get your mark. You get your mark made here, just like so, with your straight edge. You take your razor knife, and you just run it down. Run it down your line. It doesn't have to be perfect, because you're going to have to come in and tape and float the joint anyway, and that's going to cover up any kind of imperfections. It just needs to be close. Once you run it down a couple of times, you don't have to cut it all the way through. It will just snap, just like that, and then once it snaps, you can just take your razor knife, and go ahead and finish it off, just like so. Once you've got your two pieces that you want to mount. This is a standard wall stud. This is actually a piece of pretreated lumber, but it's basically the same thing as a two by four, inside your walls. What you want to do, is say if this is your stud right here, you're going to have a section of drywall. You want to always put your seams, centered in the middle of the studs, just like so. You don't want to have it right here, because if you put another piece up next to it, you're not going to have anything to screw to, so you always want to keep your seams right here in the middle. Now, if you're caught somewhere, where you're in between studs, and the seam just doesn't line up, then what you're going to have to do,is you're going to have to put a block, you're going to have to put another two by four block in between your two studs, to actually be able to have a seam, where you can screw both pieces, because you've got to have both pieces. You've got to have both pieces, just like this, and they've got to be up close, and both edges have got to be screwed to something. This is some basic techniques for installing drywall."