Drywall and Windows, Dummy Style

Hanging drywall around windows

There's a phenomenon our research staffers see on a regular basis when browsing the How-to articles at places like eHow.com. We call it the blind-leading-the-blind syndrome. What'll happen is some ignorant person googles a question, and an equally ignorant freelancer at eHow.com attempts to answer it. The results are... interesting. take eHowian Sincerity Anna (yes, that's the name she used), who misinterpreted and then mis-answered the question, "How to Install Sheetrock Around Window Frames" (now at Hunker.com).

If Anna had some actual experience with drywalling, at least more experience than the OQ, she would have known that you don't install sheetrock around window frames, you hang the drywall around the rough opening and put up the casing molding afterwards. That makes it a darned-sight easier.
Even if you understood the process, you wouldn't follow Sincerity's instructions to,

"Hang all of the whole sheets of drywall on the wall, starting on one end and working your way in toward the window, on each side."

No, dimwit, you never work inward from both ends: you always move in one direction. That way any small mistakes in wall framing are negated. You don't want to come to the middle and find out that you have an 8-foot sheet of drywall to fit in a 7'-11¾" space!

Anna spends a lot of time and space on measuring the window and cutting the drywall to fit it; clearly unfamiliar with the probability that the rough opening of the window will be at a corner of the sheet instead of in the middle. What she doesn't seem to realize, however, is that the fast way to hang drywall around windows is to simply hang the sheet over the open space and cut the hole out. Easy-peezy!

Anna didn't realize, too, that in a lot of modern buildings there are drywall window returns: the drywall wraps around the rough opening, with a sill at the bottom and metal bead protecting the exposed corners. That's hella more likely than Sincerity's instructions, which tell you to,

"Cut a piece of self-sticking drywall tape to the length of the window frame. Apply the tape to the first side of the window frame. Do the same for the other side. Press the tape's center into the corner of the edge of the drywall and the window frame. Run your finger tip down the entire edge on each side to push and press the tape into the corner..."

...and then mud it up. Yeah: tape the seam between the casing molding and and the drywall: that oughta look nice!

See now why Sincerity Anna (doofus pseudonym!) is the Dumbass of the Day? Sure you do!

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