Tag Archives: sheetrock fire prevention

How Not to Sheetrock Your Barndominium

How Not To Sheetrock Your Barndominium

Gypsum wallboard (aka Sheetrock or drywall) is used as wall and ceiling covering of choice for nearly every barndominium, shouse (shop/house) or post frame home. It affords a plethora of advantages over other interior finishes – for many, it is about cost savings. For others it is fire protection or a desire for sound deadening.

For shop areas, I see too many (in my opinion) using steel liner panels as an interior finish – usually in a misguided belief they will be a less expensive solution. Rarely is this true and liner panels are not without their own issues, as I have expounded upon previously: https://www.hansenpolebuildings.com/2013/08/steel-liner-panels/

Drywall can be installed quickly. My first summer out of high school I worked for B & M Inland Wallboard as a laborer primarily doing taping and texturing.  My boss, Joe Borg, was several things – reasonably priced (material and labor for standard homes ran 50 cents per square foot of sheetrock – hung, taped and textured with 5/8” on ceilings and firewalls, ½” elsewhere), quick (his hanging crews would do 2000 square feet of rock per man, per day for a nickel a square foot) and a fanatic about quality.

Sheetrock back then (40 plus years ago) was even more of a bargain than today, roughly 1/3rd cost. Even then, I saw some jobs not far removed from what is pictured above! When I was Sales Manager for Coeur d’Alene Truss, we did a truss job for a contractor, Joe Michielli, directly across the street from a rival truss company’s sales person. Following up, to see how everything went, Joe was busily and proudly hanging drywall. Little pieces of drywall – as Joe was bound and determined to not have any scraps larger than a foot square. I can’t even fathom how he ever managed to tape and texture it!

(As a seven degrees of separation thing, in 2017 Hansen Pole Buildings provided a post frame building kit package in Laramie, Wyoming to Joe’s son!)

There are methods of hanging, taping and texturing drywall to get a finished product my boss Joe Borg would have been proud of. And post frame buildings are perfect for this, as you can read here: https://www.hansenpolebuildings.com/2019/09/11-reasons-post-frame-commercial-girted-walls-are-best-for-drywall/.