Drywall Estimate Template

What goes on a drywall estimate

A drywall estimate has to answer the questions a homeowner or GC will use to compare you with the next bid: how much board, what kind, what finish level and what texture. That is the job of the specs strip under the header. Board area, board type, finish level, ceiling height and texture are what make two drywall prices comparable. The line items then follow the order the work happens:

• Hang: board by type and square foot, soffits and beam wraps by the linear foot, and delivery and stocking.
• Tape and finish: taping, bedding and finish coats to the stated level, corner bead, and window returns.
• Texture, specialty and cleanup: ceiling or wall texture, access panels, floor protection and haul-off.

Upgrades the customer might want, such as a Level 5 skim coat or an extra room, go in the optional-items table, priced but outside the total.

How to take off drywall

Drywall is ordered by the sheet and usually priced by the square foot of board hung. For each room, wall area is the wall length times the height, less any large openings, and ceiling area is length times width. Soffits and beam wraps are their length times their girth, both sides plus the bottom. Add the rooms up, add waste, and divide by the area of the sheet you plan to hang:

The Drywall Takeoff sheet does this room by room and splits the board by type. Rooms marked Y, such as baths, go to moisture-resistant board, ceilings to ceiling board, and everything else to regular wall board, each with its own sheet length. From the total board area it estimates joint compound, paper tape, screws and corner bead sticks, and from your production rates, the hang, finish and texture hours. The material rates are common rules of thumb (about 10 gallons of ready-mixed compound, 370 feet of tape and 1,000 screws per 1,000 square feet of board), so every one is editable. Check the product labels and the fastening schedule. For one room at a time, the free drywall calculator does the same math in your browser, prices it with your own rates and adds each room to a running estimate.

Pricing drywall line by line

Price each board type on its own line. Ceiling board hangs slower than walls, moisture-resistant board costs more, and soffits eat hours out of proportion to their square footage. Finishing works the same way: corner bead and window returns get their own lines, because a basement full of soffits and egress windows takes far longer to finish than the same area of flat wall. Build every unit price from cost on the Unit Price Builder: material, plus labor hours at your fully loaded rate, plus consumables, then overhead, then profit as a margin on price rather than a markup. Board rows there are per MSF, 1,000 square feet, so the hours read clearly. The drywall price trend shows how gypsum board prices have moved over the last year.

The completed example is a basement finish in suburban Kansas City, hung on framing by others: 3,350 square feet of board, including 274 square feet of moisture-resistant board in the bath and 64 feet of duct soffit. Hang comes to $5,240.70, tape and finish to $4,492.50, and texture, access panels and cleanup to $1,509.80. That is $11,243.00 in total, or about $3.36 per square foot of board. There is no tax line because the contractor pays tax on materials when buying them and includes it in the prices. The 30% deposit is $3,372.90, due on acceptance to schedule the crew and order board. On the takeoff sheet the same rooms come to 48 wall sheets and 23 ceiling sheets in 4×12, 10 moisture-resistant sheets in 4×8, and about 90 labor hours.

Finish levels, and what changes after hang

The Gypsum Association’s GA-214 defines finish levels 0 through 5. Most painted walls are finished to Level 4. Level 5 adds a skim coat over the entire surface for critical lighting: raking light from a window, glossy paint, a projector wall. Put the level on the estimate by number. “Smooth walls” means one thing to a homeowner and another to a finisher, and a skim coat priced as an option keeps that argument off the job.

The other source of disputes is what turns up between the estimate and the hang: bowed studs, missing blocking, a new soffit for a relocated duct, or an owner who adds a room. The terms in the example require rough-in inspections to be signed off before the crew hangs, and bill added board at the estimate’s unit prices. Anything else gets written up as a change order and signed before the work is done. When the job is finished, bill the balance on an invoice that references the estimate number and lists the approved changes.

Estimate, quote or proposal?

For a basement, a remodel or a small addition, this customer-facing estimate is usually the whole sale: a price, the terms and a signature. On a commercial job bid to a GC from drawings and a spec, where the architect sets the wall types, rated assemblies and finish levels, build your cost on the construction estimate worksheet and send a bid proposal with inclusions, exclusions and alternates. For a small, well-defined job such as a garage or a patch-and-texture repair, a construction quote with one firm price is enough.

Common mistakes on drywall estimates

• One square-foot price for everything. Soffits, bead and returns are the slow work, and burying them loses money on every basement.
• No finish level. Without a number on the estimate, a customer who expected Level 5 ends up looking at Level 4 walls under a window.
• Showing the customer ordered sheets instead of measured board. Waste belongs in your unit price, not in their quantity.
• Ordering 12-foot sheets for a basement without checking the stairs.
• No valid-until date. Board prices move, and an open-ended estimate can be held to old ones.