Estimating Wallboard | |
Estimating for wallboard is a fairly easy estimating job. For small jobs, simply measure the area to be covered in square feet and divide by either 32 sq. ft. (for 4 ft. x 8 ft. sheets) or 48 ft. (for 4 ft. x 12 ft. sheets). If you have large openings in the walls (a sliding patio door, or picture windows) you can subtract that measurement in square feet from the total. For most openings, you should simply estimate the wallboard on a solid wall basis, i.e., figure the area to be covered as though there were no openings. This is true because most cut-out pieces of wallboard, those cut out for openings, are waste. One big mistake people make is to try to use up every last scrap of wallboard. Wallboard is one of the cheapest of building materials, and you can afford to throw the waste away. But more important, a quality wallboard job is based on the fact that you will plan joint placement so there are as few joints as possible. The whole idea is to conceal any joints, so why would one make a patchwork of the job, with many unnecessary joints, simply to save a few pieces of scrap? Remember: the goal is to cover the area while creating as few joints as possible, not to see how few sheets of material you can get away with. The wallboard costs only a few dollars per sheet: you will waste countless hours cutting and fitting all those little scraps into a closet, then you will waste many more hours trying to tape and finish all those joints. How many hours are you willing to waste to save a $5 bill, the cost of one sheet of wallboard? Estimating wallboard for ceilings only is easy to do. If you multiply the length x the width of the room, and round the total up so it is divisible by either 32 sq. ft. (the 4 ft. x 8 ft. sheet) or by 48 sq. ft. (the 4 ft. x 12 ft. sheet) you will arrive at the number of sheets needed. But, lay the area out on graph paper: Depending on the measurements of the room and how the sheets will fit, you may have to order an extra sheet or two of wallboard, to avoid fitting in all the scrap and ending up with a multitude of small, hard-to-finish joints. If you are estimating the wallboard for an entire new house, you can multiply the floorspace in square feet by 3-1/2, and get a close estimate of the total amount of wallboard needed to cover all the walls and ceilings in the entire house. For example: Let us assume a 3-bedroom house with a total of 1500 sq. ft. of floorspace. If we multiply the floorspace or 1500 sq. ft. x 3-1/2 = 5250 sq. ft. of wallboard. This is a ballpark figure, and cannot be exact unless we know how open the floorplan is. Obviously, an open floorplan where there are few or no interior walls between the kitchen, dining and living rooms, and lots of windows and glass space, will require somewhat less than 5200 sq. ft. of wallboard. If we chop the same floorspace into tiny rooms, all walled in, the extra walls may bring the total wallboard needed up to 5500 sq. ft., or even more. But the formula is a good working formula for estimating wallboard for an entire house, if you remember that it is just an estimate. Written by Gary Branson Reprinted with permission. Copyright HouseNet, Inc. |