Drywall questions...

We are looking at buying a house that was built in 1993. The house is in great shape and has been well maintained. There are a couple of concerns though. There are a few areas in the house where you can see drywall screw / nail (not sure what they used) "pop marks" (slight bulge).

In addition, there are a few areas where you can see drywall joints. Particularly around the open staircase where the drywaller would have had to work up high (3 horizontal sheets of drywall).

There are also a couple spots where there are cracks in the drywall near a door or window.

One more thing...the walls have a "sand" texture, but it wasn't the sand that I'm used to. Some of the particles were slightly larger (not anything close to popcorn). It had more of a dated look than the sand texture that I'm used to.

Here's my question: I've hung, finished, and repaired drywall. With that said, I'm kind of a "hack". If we bought this house, I'd want to have this professionally done. How big of a job is something like this? I'd say that I noticed maybe (6) 8' seams that would have to be redone. There were also a handful of "small bad spackle jobs". I saw probably 25 nail / screw bulges. I saw 2 cracks (6" to 8") near a door and window. We would also like to get the entire house (1,800 sq. ft) retextured.

I 'm wondering how big of a job this is for a pro, and whether it would be worth sticking the $ into it? Is this a $500 job or a $5,000 job?

Any input would be appreciated! We have the opportunity to buy it right, and will have to put some $ into it, but we don't want to end up sticking too much into it.

Thanks!

 

It's next to impossible to give you a price site unseen and labor prices can vary greatly in different locales. The only good way to get pricing is to get a couple of estimates from local contractors. We can guide you if you want to diy.

The repairs aren't overly complicated with matching the texture the biggest issue. Sand texture comes in fine, medium and coarse. Pics of the texture might help us better identify it.

 

Thanks for the reply. Yeah I'm sure it's tough to give a price site unseen...

As for the texture, our ideal would be to change the texture type...if possible go from sand to orange peel. Then the repair person wouldn't have to worry about matching texture. How big of a job is it to change texture type? Is that an expensive job?

As for location, we are in southern WI.

Thanks.

 

If you just texture over the existing, the existing texture will affect how the new looks - the repairs will look different than the rest. Normally you'll sand/scrape off the old texture and/or skim coat over it so everything is the same before you shoot a different texture. Spraying texture is messy and I would expect the labor cost of changing out the texture to be a lot more than the cost of the repairs.

 

I could see this being a pretty big job if the joints weren't properly taped.

I'd definitely have a contractor or two take a look as this cost could be high enough that you look for a concession from the seller.