Where to land tapered vs. cut drywall edges in a small room
I’m hanging the sheets in a small half-bath remodel and wanted to get some more experienced opinions on joint planning. The room is about 52 x 72 x 90, so I know I’m going to have a few places where seams are unavoidable. I do realize now I could have ordered 54′ sheets and had 2 seams in the whole room, but I’m past that point.
The long walls will get two horizontal sheets each with about 2′ of waste which I should be able to use on the adjacent short wall. On those 6′ sheets, should I place my one lengthwise cut edge at the ceiling or the floor (i.e. are inside corners trickier to do if one edge is beveled and one edge is square)?
On the short walls (one of which has a window dead-center and the other has a door 24″ in from one side), I’m stuck with either having a lot of waste or landing a couple (cut) butt joints somewhere. If I can, I’ll just go for the waste, but would it be cleaner to do a small butt a few inches in from the frame above the window/door or down along the sides of the window/door frames? I’m thinking the shorter the seam the better, but not sure if one type is more obvious to the eye, etc.
Thanks
Dan
Replies
You're over thinking the whole thing. Dry wall is cheap. I'd use 4 12' sheets hung horizontally. Put the cut edge at the bottom.
The problem with 4.5' drywall is that it can only be trucked one unit wide in stead of 2 units wide. This essentially doubles the transportation cost. 9' or 10' walls should be done with the cut piece in the middle with the cut edge up. This is because drywall tapers don't want to bend over, especially if they are using a bazooka or a skim box. The cut edge goes up because it forms a ledge to support the mud. Because they are very flat 9' steel stud walls can be done using 9' rock vertically.
Thanks, @mgmahan. I have a habit of overthinking things, so it's good to have that confirmed.
I ended up keeping my 4x8s and having one horizontal beveled seam on each wall with the door and window walls each having an additional single butt seam roughly in the middle of the header (to make stress-cracks less likely). One of them will be seldom looked at and the other will be behind a window treatment, so likely not seen much either. I would have tried 12' but alas, only 8-footers fit on my roof-rack safely. I'll have the longer ones delivered next time.
Cheers!
Please don't have 4 sheets delivered.