norathomas•16d agoMost Upvoted

Why I think last month's perfect build week was actually a setup for failure

Everyone in the builder's forum raves about hitting 20 drywall sheets in a day, but my best week was 42 sheets in 5 days - and I regretted it. The crew rushed so much on that job off Route 9 in Ashburn that we missed two studs on the back wall and had to tear down 8 sheets to fix the sagging. Has anyone else had a 'perfect' week that ended up costing more time and money in rework?

3 comments

3 Comments

ryan_ellis16d ago

Heard a buddy of mine brag about his crew doing 50 sheets in one day on a basement job out in Leesburg. Turned out they skipped half the blocking and just slapped the drywall over everything. Three weeks later the homeowner called because the ceiling was literally bowing in the middle. Took them four days to rip it all out and redo it right, plus they had to pay for new material out of their own pocket. Sometimes going fast just means you get to screw up faster, that's all.

iris_davis9016d ago

Read an inspector's blog who said the most expensive drywall jobs he sees always start with a crew bragging about their sheet count. Turns out speed is just a fancy way of saying you didn't check your work.

ryan_ellis16d ago

Hell yeah, that blog is spot on. Nobody talks about how fast crews skip over the pre-work like checking for flat studs or bad wood, which is what actually makes the sheets sit right. You can hang 60 boards in a day, but if every third one is bowed because the framing's garbage, you just created a headache that'll cost someone triple to fix later.