HELP & GUIDES

Drywall

What it's for

A board takeoff for one room or a whole house. You list the rooms and walk away with a sheet count, tape, joint compound, screws and corner bead, plus an elevation of the first room's longest wall with the board hung on it. It is an order quantity, not a code check.

Step by step

The example is the screen as it opens: one 12' by 10' room with 8' walls, a door, a window and a ceiling, hung in 4x8 board.

Drywall inputs at their defaults: SHEET SIZE 4x8, THICKNESS 1/2 inch, FINISH LEVEL 4, then ROOM 1 with LENGTH 12' 0", WIDTH 10' 0", HEIGHT 8' 0", DOORS 1, WINDOWS 1 and INCLUDE CEILING on. The strip under the title reads 17 sheets. 1 2 3 4 5 6
The board first, then one block of inputs for each room.
  1. SHEET SIZE — the board you are buying: 4x8, 4x10 or 4x12. Leave it at 4x8.
  2. THICKNESS — 1/4", 3/8", 1/2" or 5/8". This names the board on the material list. It does not change any quantity.
  3. FINISH LEVEL — 0 to 5, how far the board is finished, from left bare up to a skim coat over the whole surface. A higher level buys more joint compound. Leave it at 4. At 0 the board is hung and left bare — no tape, no mud, and neither row on the list.
  4. Under ROOMS, measure the room wall to wall along the floor for LENGTH (12' 0") and WIDTH (10' 0"), and floor to ceiling for HEIGHT (8' 0"). Tap a value to type your own.
  5. DOORS and WINDOWS — count the openings in the room. One of each here. The counts buy corner bead. They do not take board off the order.
  6. INCLUDE CEILING — on if you are boarding the lid as well as the walls.
  7. For a second room, tap Add Room and fill in its block the same way. The trash can at the top right of a block removes that room.
  8. WASTE FACTOR — the extra you buy for offcuts and breakage, in steps of 5%. It opens at 10%.
  9. Read the answer in RESULTS: 17 sheets, 1 tape roll, 4.6 gal mud, 472 sq ft net area.
  10. Scroll on to the drawing and the MATERIALS list. BASIS & WHAT WAS ASSUMED states the yields the list is figured on: no opening deductions, the corner bead per door and window, tape per 1,000 sq ft, mud per finish level and screws per square foot.
  11. Save or share the job with the buttons at the foot of the screen.
WASTE FACTOR at 10%, then the RESULTS card reading 17 sheets, 1 tape roll, 4.6 gal mud and 472 sq ft net area, with the drywall elevation drawing below it 8 9 10
Waste factor, the results card, and the wall elevation under it.
The small default tag beside a value means you have not changed it. While every input is still a default the results are dimmed and tagged defaults, because the answer is not your job yet. The ⓘ beside FINISH LEVEL and WASTE FACTOR opens one sentence on what the term means.

Reading the results

The headline is the sheet count for every room together, with waste added and rounded up to a whole sheet. It also shows in a strip under the title whenever the results card is scrolled off screen.

Tape and mud. Tape is in whole rolls. Mud is in gallons and moves with FINISH LEVEL, down to none at level 0.

Net area is the walls, plus the ceiling where you included it, before waste. Door and window openings are not taken out — the cutout is scrap, and the drawing says so: NO DEDUCT — CUTOUT IS SCRAP.

The drawing is room 1's longest wall in elevation with the board hung horizontal, the ceiling as a tile beside it, and a detail of a tapered joint and a butt joint. The line JOB 472 SF +10% = 519.2 SF / 32 SF = 17 SHEETS is the sheet count worked out in front of you, so you can check it. The openings on the wall are schematic — the screen only knows how many there are, not their size or where they sit. The screw line ends VERIFY PER GA-216: the calculator buys screws by weight and does not set a spacing. Pinch to zoom, or tap the expand button at the drawing's top right to open it full screen. See Reading the drawing.

The drywall drawing and the MATERIALS list: 1/2 drywall 4x8, 17 sheets; joint tape, 1 roll; joint compound, 4.6 gal; drywall screws, 4 lb; corner bead, 4 sticks. Below is a dimmed SHARE PDF with a list icon at its right end, beside a lit SAVE, with the line Enter your own measurements to export. 10 11
The material list, and the save and share buttons at the foot of the screen.

Materials is the order: board, joint tape, joint compound, screws by the pound, and corner bead in 10' sticks for the door and window wraps and returns.

SHARE PDF sends a sheet with the drawing, your inputs and the material list. The list icon at its right end sends the material list alone. SAVE puts the job in History. SHARE PDF and the list icon in it stay dim until you change at least one input. SAVE stays lit, but while every input is still a default a tap only answers Enter your job's numbers first and saves nothing.

Drywall is a Pro calculator, and sharing a PDF and saving to History are part of Pro too. This help is free. See Free and Pro.

Common mistakes