Drywall · Charlotte, NC
Walls that read
dead flat.
Hanging, taping, finishing to Level 5 and patching. Drywall is judged in one moment — late afternoon, light raking down the wall — and that moment is the whole job.
What we do
Four jobs, and
they’re not the same.
Hanging board is labour. Finishing it is a craft, and it’s where the difference between a cheap room and a properly finished one actually lives. Repair is a third skill entirely — making new work disappear into old is harder than doing the whole wall.
Hanging
New board on new framing. Screw spacing to code, joints staggered and landed on framing, moisture-resistant board where it belongs and cement board behind tile.
Taping & finishing
Three coats minimum, feathered wide, sanded properly. Level 4 as standard, Level 5 skim wherever light or sheen demands it.
Repair & patching
Holes, cracks, pops, water damage, corner bead. Cut back square, backed, patched, matched. The test is whether you can find it in six months.
The bit nobody explains
Drywall has six
finish levels.
They’re an actual industry standard, and the level you’re quoted is the single biggest driver of price and of how the wall looks in five years. Most quotes never mention it. Ours states it in writing, for every room.
No finish
Temporary construction or a wall that’s coming back down. Board only, nothing taped.
Fire-taped
Tape embedded in joint compound. Plenum spaces and areas nobody sees. Tool marks fine.
Tile substrate
One coat over tape and fasteners. What goes behind tile or in a garage — not a finish surface.
Heavy texture
Two coats. Only correct under a heavy texture or a heavy wall covering. Rarely what you want.
Standard finish
Three coats, sanded. The industry default for flat paint and light textures — most Charlotte homes.
Skim coat
Level 4 plus a full skim across the whole surface. Required for gloss, deep colour and raking light. This is the one that costs more and is worth it.
Repairs
Eight things we get
called out for weekly.
Nail and screw pops
Fasteners backing out as framing dries and moves. Reset, dimpled, filled in three coats — not smeared over once.
Cracks over doors and windows
Almost always movement, not a failure of the drywall. We treat the cause first, then use mesh and setting compound so it doesn’t come straight back.
Holes — doorknob to fist to furniture
Cut back to a clean square, backing installed, patch fitted, three coats, finished to match. You should not be able to find it afterwards.
Water stains and ceiling sag
Stop the source, cut out anything soft, dry it properly, replace and seal with a stain-blocking primer. Painting over a water stain never works.
Corner bead damage
The metal or vinyl bead gets crushed at every hallway corner. Cut out, new bead set true, three coats and feathered wide.
Seams and butt joints showing
Usually a job finished too narrow. We widen the feather considerably and skim the field so it stops reading under side light.
Before · cut back squareDust control
Your house is not
a building site.
Drywall sanding makes the finest dust in construction and it travels through a whole house on a draught. On occupied homes we treat containment as part of the job, not an extra.
- Plastic containment and zip doors on every opening into the work area
- HVAC returns sealed so dust doesn’t get pushed through the whole house
- Vacuum-assisted sanders on larger areas, wet-sanding in small rooms and baths
- Floor protection across the route in and out, not just the room itself
- Negative air on whole-house and remediation work
- Wipe-down and vacuum before we hand the room back
How we price
Quoted properly,
before we start.
Every job is quoted on its own after we’ve seen it. Access, ceiling height and how much of it is ceiling all move the number — so you get a fixed price on paper, materials and labour included, before any work begins.
Drywall questions
Asked and answered.
How do I know if I need Level 4 or Level 5?
Stand in the room in the late afternoon with the lights off and look along the wall towards the window. If light rakes across that surface — big windows, an open great room, a long hallway with a light at the end — you want Level 5. Same goes for any sheen above eggshell and for deep, saturated colours.
Everywhere else, a properly executed Level 4 is the right call and we’ll say so rather than sell you a skim you don’t need.
Will there be dust everywhere?
Some, always — anyone promising zero dust is being loose with the truth. What we do is control it: plastic containment on openings, zip doors, floor protection, vacuum-assisted pole sanders where practical, and negative air on bigger jobs. We wet-sand in occupied bathrooms and small rooms.
Realistically, expect a fine film in adjacent rooms on a big job. We wipe down at the end, and we tell you which day the sanding falls on so you can plan around it.
How long before it can be painted?
Joint compound needs to dry fully, not just feel dry. In Charlotte’s humidity that’s typically 24 hours between coats and a further day after the final sand. Setting-type compounds (the ones that chemically harden) let us cut that down for repairs, which is how we do same-day patch-and-paint on smaller work.
New board always gets primed before finish paint. Bare paper and joint compound absorb completely differently, and skipping the primer is how you end up with seams flashing through the topcoat.
Do you do the painting too?
We do, and on repair work it’s usually the sensible move — one contract, one crew, and nobody arguing about whether the patch or the paint is the reason you can see it. See our painting page.
What about mould behind the drywall?
If we open a wall and find mould, we stop and tell you. Small, contained surface growth from a resolved leak we can treat and rebuild. Anything widespread, or anything where the source is still active, needs a remediation specialist first — and we’ll say so even though it means we don’t get the work that week.
Free estimates · Fully insured
Get the wall
looking right.
Send us a photo of the damage or tell us the room count — we’ll come and look, and quote it with the finish level written down.