Portland Drywall Contractor — Repair, Installation & Texture Matching
Typical range: $600 – $2,500 Final price depends on scope — your free estimate is itemized in writing.
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Drywall Repair in Portland Homes
Most of what we repair falls into four categories: holes, cracks, nail pops and water damage. Holes are the easy one — a doorknob through the wall, a failed anchor, a plumber’s access cut. Cracks usually mean the house moved, which in Portland means seasonal settling, and the repair only holds if the seam is re-taped rather than filled.
Nail pops are the ones people live with for years. They come back if you just fill them, because the fastener is still moving; we reset or replace it, then finish over it.
Water damage is different in kind. Wet drywall has to come out, not be dried in place, and the cause has to be found first — a roof leak, a supply line, a failed shower pan. We’ll tell you what we find before we close anything up.
- Small holes & dents: $50–$160
- Cracks & seams: $95–$425
- Ceiling repair: $235–$1,380
- Water damage: $635–$1,640
New Drywall Installation & Finishing
New drywall runs $2 to $6 per square foot installed, which covers hanging, taping, three coats of mud, sanding and texture. The spread comes down to ceiling height, how cut-up the room is, and what finish level you need — a garage is not a living room.
Most of our new drywall goes in as part of a larger job. A basement finish and an attic conversion are both mostly drywall once the framing and insulation pass inspection, and doing it with the same crew that’s already in the house means the transitions and the texture match the rest of the home.
We also hang drywall for additions, garage conversions, and walls that moved during a remodel.
- New drywall, installed: $2–$6 / sq ft
- Includes: Hang, tape, three coats, sand, texture
- Permits & inspections: We handle them
Matching Existing Wall & Ceiling Texture
This is the part that separates a drywall repair from a patch you can see from the doorway. A flawless mud job under the wrong texture still reads as a repair, and once you notice it you never stop noticing it.
Portland houses carry a century of different finishes — hand-troweled plaster in the pre-war homes, orange peel and knockdown through the mid-century and the eighties, skip trowel, and smooth Level 5 in newer construction. Each has a different spray pattern, mud consistency and knockdown timing, and matching one that’s been painted over several times means reading what’s underneath it.
We test the match on a scrap before touching your wall. If it can’t be matched invisibly — which happens with some hand-troweled work — we’ll tell you up front and talk about re-texturing the whole wall to a break line instead of chasing it.
- Texture applied: $0.80–$2.00 / sq ft
- Skim coat to smooth: $1.00–$1.30 / sq ft
- Match tested first: On a scrap, not your wall
What Portland's Older Homes Require by Law
Two different hazards, two different cutoff years, and almost nobody explains the difference.
Lead — homes built before 1978. Sanding or cutting painted surfaces in those houses requires a Lead-Based Paint Renovation license. Zurc Construction holds one through the Oregon CCB. Multnomah County tells homeowners to ask any contractor to show their current LBPR license before work starts, and that is good advice — uncertified renovation carries civil penalties up to $5,000 per violation per day, and you do not want that conversation happening in your house. There’s an exemption for genuinely minor work: under six square feet of paint in a room.
Asbestos — homes built before 2004. Wall and ceiling texture is classified as friable material, so Oregon DEQ requires an accredited survey before it’s disturbed. If the survey comes back positive, removal is abatement work and must be done by a licensed asbestos abatement contractor. We are not one, and we will not pretend otherwise. What we do is tell you that you need the survey, help you get it, and do the drywall and texture work after the abatement is cleared. The same under-three-square-feet exemption covers ordinary patch repairs.
If your house was built before 2004 and you’re asking about a popcorn ceiling, start with the survey. Any contractor who offers to scrape it without one is either unaware of the rule or counting on you being unaware of it.
- LBPR licensed: Oregon CCB — ask to see it
- Asbestos survey: Required pre-2004 — we coordinate
- Abatement: Referred to a licensed contractor
What Drywall Work Costs in Portland
A typical Portland drywall repair runs about $600, with most jobs landing between $300 and $900. What moves it is the size of the damage, whether the ceiling is involved, and how hard the texture is to match.
There’s a labor gap worth knowing about. A handyman runs around $60 an hour and a drywall specialist around $90. The specialist is the better value on anything involving texture or a ceiling, because the finish work is where drywall jobs are won or lost — and because redoing a bad patch costs more than doing it right once.
Every estimate is written and itemized, separating materials, labor, texture and any lead-safe setup required. Free, no obligation.
- Average repair: $600
- Typical range: $300–$900
- New drywall: $2–$6 / sq ft
- Nail pop repair: $15–$65
Drywall Contractors Serving Portland & the Metro
We do drywall across Portland and the surrounding cities — Beaverton, Gresham, Lake Oswego, Tigard, Hillsboro, Tualatin, Milwaukie, West Linn, Oregon City and Happy Valley.
Drywall is indoor work, which makes it one of the few things that runs on schedule from November through April here. If you’ve been putting off a repair because the rest of the house was waiting on dry weather, this is the season for it — and if the walls are opening up for interior painting anyway, doing both at once means one crew, one setup and one lead-safe containment instead of two.
Call (503) 309-5973 and describe the damage, or send a photo.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about Drywall Work in Portland, Oregon.
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Licensed, insured and bonded contractor serving Portland, Beaverton, Gresham, Lake Oswego, Tigard and surrounding Oregon communities.
