February 2, 2017
The executive summary is that Roy McDaniel from Southern County Drywall came out and did a poor job installing drywall on my house renovation in Laguna Hills. So, I fired him. I have now have had to spend quite a bit of time repairing cracked drywall panels and replacing those drywall panels that he installed that were not worth fixing. Needless to say I would not hire him again. Roy will claim that he has 40 years of drywall experience and his work is to "industry standard". IT IS NOT. If you want an complete explanation continue reading below.
I had Roy McDaniel, Southern Counties Drywall, come out and install drywall on my house renovation in Laguna Hills. The job consisted of work in 4 different rooms for a total of 115 linear feet of approximately 8 foot high wall totaling approximately 920 square feet of wall surface. The walls had a total of 4 windows, 1 sliding glass door, and multiple power and switch outlets. I found Roy to be very personable and easy to talk to. He is a good salesman and stresses his 40 years of drywall experience. Unfortunately what Roy fails to mention is that he likes to work REALLY FAST and he is not too concerned about the quality of his work. Roy claims to work to "industry standard" but that is not the case. On my part I have over 50 years of engineering experience and over 35 years of property management experience including residential and industrial properties. I know correct drywall installation work when I see it. The day Roy came to install the drywall he and his two man crew accomplished the entire drywall installation screwed in and ready for taping in a little under 5 hours. I was surprised to see the panels installed that fast. However, the next day when I inspected the job I found out why it went in as fast as it did. Roy and his crew just brute forced the panels into place. They did not bother to measure correctly and just forced the drywall panels into position to save time. Unfortunately you cannot force drywall into place because it is very brittle and cracks and buckles if you try to do so. In so doing they cracked the drywall panel corners in 14 places, buckled or otherwise damaged the seams other panels in over 20 places, cut large gaps in the fit at interior corners, failed to overlap the outside corners on every corner leaving the corner metal beads unsupported, left 20 to 25 attachment screws too high to tape over, and installed at least 30 screws too close to the edge of the drywall panels (3/8" is the minimum distance from the screw to the edge of the panel). Because of the poor fit I had to replace all of the narrow drywall panels around all of the windows and the sliding glass door recesses. I am sure that Roy's plan was to cover up all of these defects with paper tape and joint compound so they would not be visible after the job was done. Fortunately for me I inspected to job before he was able to do that. Upon seeing what Roy's crew had done I canceled the rest of the job and fired them. Roy's answer to my complaint was that his job was to "industry standard". So, I spent some time and researched "industry standard". I found installation specifications from USG (the manufacturer of the drywall) on-line. These published "industry standards" from USG clearly detail how to install drywall and what "industry standard" is. As an engineer I work with standards and specifications all of the time. I know how to read and interpret them. Roy's work simply did not meet the true "industry standard" as specified by USG. Here are the links if you care to do your own research:
The full specification from USG the drywall manufacturer:
https://www.usg.com/content/dam/USG_Marketing_Communications/canada/product_promotional_materials/finished_assets/cgc-construction-handbook-ch05-finishing-drywall-systems-can-en.pdf
A simpler version of the specification from the Lowes website:
http://pdf.lowes.com/howtoguides/081099027833_how.pdf
I have now had to spend quite a bit of time and effort repairing Roy's work and preparing it for taping. Needles to say I cannot recommend Southern Counties Drywall for any future work.
In closing I would say that if you want to just get some drywall up on the walls and you didn't care how well it is installed then Roy will be a good choice. His pricing is competitive and he is very fast. However, if you don't want a lot of hidden damage underneath the paper tape and joint compound you need to find a better contractor. read more