How many of you completed framing, electrical, insulation and ordered 42 sheets of drywall only to discover that you can't get them into the home theater? Am I the first? :)

I have 42 sheets of 5/8" 4'x8' drywall in my garage that I am unable to fit (even when cut down to 92" for vertical installation) into my home theater due to an extended wall I added on.

Possible solutions:
1) Cut panels smaller (around 6' long) and install horizontaly?
2) Tear out insulation within a 14.5" cavity between framing and squeeze panels through electrical wiring and speaker wire?

I also bought extra drywall sheets to cover walls within a communications room and laundry room where the panels don't fit also.

Just a FYI. A friend had a contractor in to look at his basement and get a finishing quote. He had a very tight stairway with a couple of turns and there was no way to take sheets down the stairwell.

The contractor said "no problem" he was going to roll up the living room carpet, unscrew section(s) of sub-flooring, lower all the construction materials then replace the sub-floor and carpet.

If you cut all the sheets down, you'll end up with a whole bunch of extra butt joints to mud and tape. Seems like that would be a whole lot more work than opening up a hole in your new wall to pass the whole sheets through, and then patching the hole.

My vote: cut a hole in the wall and use the whole sheets.

Good luck! -- Paul

Do you have any windows in the lower level that can be pulled out temporarily?

I vote for option 2, going through the wall.

Thank you guys. I believe option 2 is the best as well. Since the speaker and electrical wires are 44" apart, I will need to see if they can be streatched apart far enough to allow a 48" drywall panel to slide through.

When I had some drywall work done in a half bath and the sheets were too big to fit into the room my drywall guy told me to score the back of the sheet fold in half keeping the front paper intact, carry into the space unfold and then put up. Makes your sheet 4 x 4 and much easier to handle.

Just my .02

Regards,

RTROSE

I vote for option two also. It would take you less time to repair the wall than it would to do all that extra mudding and taping from the extra joints.

What about removing the new window (is it fixed?) and loading the sheets in diagonally through the window opening? You can distribute the drywall from the theater area to the other rooms if you remove a few studs and insulation temporarily. Cutting down the sheets to room height might mean less turning radius.