Decorating With Drywall
Drywall panels and innovative corner beads turn a former living room into a formal dining room.
Editor’s note: The embossed drywall in this article may no longer be available. If you are interested in creating a paneled wall using drywall, consider this article: Elegant Wainscot From Drywall Scraps
Back in 1981, when my wife and I built our house, we were fond of the rustic look. Of all the rooms in our house, we were most proud of the living room with its knotty-pine trim, woodstove and fieldstone chimney.
Over the years, our tastes, like our family, have grown up. After ten years and three kids, we added a larger living room, and our former living room became an informal dining room. Having outgrown the rustic look, we planned to turn this room into a formal dining room, complete with raised panels and built-up moldings. I’m an accomplished drywall mechanic, but my finish-carpentry skills are rudimentary at best. So the remodel was put off. Fortunately, procrastination paid off: After years of making plans and putting off decisions, I discovered that drywall manufacturers had come out with materials that allowed me to use my drywall skills to create a formal dining room and save a lot of money in the process.
Raised panels need careful layout
I knew I was ready to tackle this job when my local drywall supplier showed me a sample of Designer Drywall (from Pittcon Industries). Designer Drywall is simply a 1-in. thick sheet of gypsum with a collection of raised panels embossed on the face. All four edges taper to in. This material is available in a ceiling version as well as a wainscot version; I decided to use both for my job (top photo, facing page). The ceiling version consists of 1-ft. square panels embossed onto a 4×4 sheet of drywall; the wainscot version has 12-in. wide by -in. high panels embossed onto a 32-in. by 48-in. sheet. Other shapes and sizes are available for stairwells and other special situations. Although I did not have to learn much carpentry to install these panels, I did have to brush up on my layout skills. Designer Drywall panels are designed to be installed over standard wood or metal studs spaced 16 in. o. c.; however, the layout must be carefully considered so that all the fasteners and cutouts for things such as electrical boxes fall within the flat surfaces of the panels. I also had to make sure the collection of embossed panels was evenly centered between the walls.
Standard drywall fills the gaps
Other than the layout considerations, I approached this project much as I would any other drywall job, starting with the ceiling. To avoid a lot of messy demolition, I decided to leave the existing ceiling in place and to cover over it with the new one. I used furring strips and shims to create a level substrate for the new ceiling. Even if I’d removed the old ceiling, I would have used furring strips because they gave me the flexibility to lay out the ceiling panels without regard to the existing framing.
For more detail and photos, click the View PDF button below.