Drywall Contractor in Vail, CO

Showcase Drywall is a drywall contractor based in Eagle, serving homes throughout Vail and the rest of Eagle County. We hang drywall, finish drywall, repair drywall and apply interior plaster, and we have been doing it in this valley for 26 years. Call (970) 977-0247 and you will have a free estimate within 24 hours.

We take drywall jobs directly from homeowners and homeowner associations. We also work with general contractors, property managers, plumbers and electricians. You do not need a builder in the middle to hire us.

Here is what a Showcase drywall job includes:

5/8 inch Type X drywall throughout, not the thinner or cheaper board
20 gauge steel studs wherever we frame, never flimsy 25 gauge
A Level 5 drywall finish on large walls and around big windows, so the surface stays flat in direct sunlight
Proper staging on tall ceilings and stairwells, so the finish is true all the way up
Interior plaster and specialty plaster finishes, including hand-troweled Venetian plaster
Texture matched to the rest of your home, then painting, so a repair cannot be found later
Your home tented off, floors and furniture protected, and the site left clean every single day

Areas we serve around Vail

We cover the whole valley. Our drywall crews are serving homes in Vail, East Vail, Lionshead, Beaver Creek, Bachelor Gulch, Arrowhead, Avon, Edwards, Cordillera, Eagle-Vail, Minturn, Eagle and Gypsum, which is most of the populated areas of Eagle County. Outside the county we are also serving Summit County and the Roaring Fork Valley, and we will quote a project in either of those areas the same way.

Our office is in Eagle, in the middle of the areas we serve. That means a crew is already in the county when you call, rather than driving over Vail Pass in a storm to reach your home. Local matters more here than in most places: the mountain building season is short, winter closes roads, and the Town of Vail permits construction only between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. A drywall contractor who lives in these areas plans around all of it.

Drywall contractor services for Vail homes

Our drywall services cover new homes, remodels, repair and interior plaster. Most homeowners get in touch about one of the services below, and a good share of our remodels start as a single room and grow once the owner sees the finish. If you are not sure which of these services you need, describe the rooms when you call and we will tell you which ones apply.

New home drywall

We hang and finish entire homes, from framing corrections through final drywall finish. On a custom home we are working to an architect’s drawings and a general contractor’s construction schedule, with other trades waiting behind us. Our commitment is simple: we finish on the date we gave you, because the painters, trim carpenters and flooring crews cannot start until the drywall is done.

Remodels and additions

A drywall remodel in a finished home is a different animal from new construction. The house is furnished, often occupied, and sometimes it is a rental with bookings on the calendar. We tent the area we are in, protect floors and furniture, and clean at the end of every day.

The owners of a home in Strawberry Park, Beaver Creek had us remove a heavy, rough hand texture from two stairwells and the hallways connecting them. We skim-coated every wall to a smooth Level 5 drywall finish and repainted. The home was furnished the entire time. The job ran 10 days, and no drywall dust reached the rest of the house.

Skim coating and refinishing

If you bought a home with dated texture on the walls, you do not have to live with it. Skim coating builds a new smooth drywall surface over the old finish. It costs more than painting over what is there, and in a home with big windows it is the difference between walls that read flat and walls that show every ridge at four in the afternoon.

Drywall repair, patching and water damage

When an electrician or a plumber opens a wall, someone has to close it so you cannot tell. Our drywall repair crews patch the opening, match the surrounding finish and paint the area so the repair disappears. A repair done this way costs more than a handyman patch and it is the only kind of repair worth paying for, because a repair you can see from across the room is a repair you will pay to have done again.

On water damage, a patch alone is the wrong repair. We cut out the wet drywall and the wet insulation, replace both, then finish and repaint. A home in Bear Paw, Beaver Creek lost a section of ceiling when a fitting in the hot water heating system let go. We cut out a four foot by four foot area, replaced the soaked insulation, hung new drywall, then finished and repainted the ceiling. That repair took four days.

Leaving wet material in place is the expensive mistake. Trapped moisture means mold, and mold means a repair far larger than the one you started with. Any water damage repair we quote starts with removing what is wet.

Repair jobs we take in Vail homes include ceiling repair after a leak, hole repair in walls and doors, crack repair at corners and seams, nail pop repair, and repair of the cut-outs left behind by other trades. If you need a repair quote, call (970) 977-0247.

Interior plaster and Venetian plaster

We do hand-troweled finishes as well as drywall. After a new fireplace went into a home at the bottom of the ski lift in Vail Village, beside the fountain, we finished the surround in Venetian plaster and blended it into the walls around it. That project ran four weeks.

Steel stud framing

Where a job calls for framing, we use 20 gauge steel studs. Lighter 25 gauge studs flex, and flex shows up a year later as cracked corners and popped seams in the drywall.

Painting after drywall

Painting is part of how a drywall repair disappears. New mud takes paint differently from the wall around it, so a patch that is only spot-painted catches the light. Our painting covers the full surface, and on a ceiling that usually means the entire ceiling rather than the patched section.

Painting also decides whether a skim-coated wall looks like new construction or like a cover-up. On a Level 5 surface, painting goes on evenly because the joints and the field absorb at the same rate. On a poorly finished wall, no painting hides the difference.

If you have your own painting contractor, we will coordinate with them and tell them honestly when a surface is ready. If you would rather we handle the painting as part of the job, we can quote it that way.

Recent drywall projects in Eagle County

Project	Where	What we did	Days on site
Multi-room patch	Buckhorn Valley, Gypsum	Closed the cut-outs an electrician left in an upstairs hallway, a living room and a basement family room, matched the finish, painted	3
Ceiling water damage	Bear Paw, Beaver Creek	Cut out a four by four foot wet section, replaced soaked insulation, hung and finished new drywall, repainted the ceiling	4
Stairwell refinish	Strawberry Park, Beaver Creek	Removed heavy hand texture from two stairwells and the hallways, skim-coated to Level 5, repainted, home furnished throughout	10
Venetian plaster fireplace	Vail Village	Hand-troweled plaster around a new fireplace, blended into the surrounding walls	20
Gallery repair	Vail Village	Repeat water damage repair with the gallery open and artwork on the walls	varies

Remodels like the Strawberry Park job are the clearest example of what we do differently. Most remodels in these homes are sold on price and finished in a hurry. Ours are scheduled around the family living there.

Why mountain homes are harder to finish

Vail homes are built for the view: tall windows, high ceilings, open stairwells, and snow outside throwing light onto every surface. All of that is good for living in and unforgiving for drywall.

Light is the reason. A wall that looks perfect under a work lamp shows every seam when afternoon sun rakes across it. The industry calls this critical lighting. National Gypsum’s guidance on drywall finish levels is clear that natural light and critical lighting call for a Level 5 finish, and that surfaces should be judged under the lighting they will actually live under.

A Level 5 drywall finish adds a thin skim coat across the entire surface, so the joints and the field of the wall have the same texture and the same porosity. That is what prevents flashing, the dull or shiny patching you see where paint sits differently over the mud.

This is where a cheap drywall bid shows up later. Level 4 is a perfectly good finish in a bedroom with ordinary lighting. In a great room with a two-story window wall it is the wrong specification, and no amount of painting fixes it afterwards.

Two more things we do differently in these homes:

Staging on tall drywall. On a 20 foot stairwell, a finisher on a ladder can only reach so far before the quality of the finish depends on how far they are stretching. We stage tall drywall properly, so the finish at the top matches the finish at eye level.

Board selection. We hang 5/8 inch Type X drywall throughout. It is heavier and costs more than 1/2 inch board. It also sags less on ceilings, carries a fire rating, and deadens sound between rooms, which matters when someone is sleeping on the other side of the wall from the media room.

The drywall work we are known for

Showcase Drywall has 26 years in Eagle County. Commercial construction is how most people here know us: Four Seasons Vail, the Park Hyatt in Beaver Creek, the Antlers in Vail, the Riverwalk buildings in Edwards, the Snowmass Club.

That construction work is the reason our home finishes look the way they do. A hotel lobby and a great room pose the same problem: a large surface, hard light, and nowhere to hide a bad seam.

We also work where there is no room for mess. We have handled repeated water damage repairs for an art gallery in Vail Village, rebuilding and refinishing walls with millions of dollars of artwork hanging around us. Every one of those jobs was contained, dust-free, and finished without closing the gallery.

How a drywall project runs

Stage	What happens	What you do
Estimate	We walk the job, measure, and confirm the drywall finish level each room needs	Call or request a quote. You hear back within 24 hours
Scheduling	You get a start date and a finish date, and the trades behind us plan on both	Confirm access, and in an occupied home, which rooms stay off limits
Protection	We tent the area and cover floors and furniture before anything is cut	Point out anything fragile
Hang	Drywall goes up, 5/8 inch Type X, with framing corrected first where needed	Nothing
Finish	Tape, mud, sand, then the agreed finish level, Level 5 where the light demands it	Nothing
Finish and paint	Texture matched to the rest of the home, then painting	Approve the match before we move on
Clean and walk	Site cleaned daily and at completion, then we walk the job with you	Tell us anything you want corrected

What drywall costs in Vail

We do not publish a drywall price list, because no two of these homes are alike. A hallway patch and a 10 day skim coat of two stairwells are different projects by an order of magnitude, and an honest cost requires seeing the job.

What we can tell you is what drives the cost:

Finish level. A Level 5 finish costs more than Level 4, because it is one more full skim coat of every surface.
Ceiling height and stairwells. Tall drywall needs staging, and staging adds cost in hours rather than materials.
Occupied or empty. Tenting, protection and daily cleanup in a furnished home cost labor that an empty shell does not.
Texture matching. Matching an existing hand finish is skilled work, and slower than spraying a new one.
Painting. Whether we repaint a patched area or the whole ceiling changes the cost, and sometimes the whole ceiling is the only honest answer.
Specialty finishes. Venetian plaster and architectural finishes cost what finish work costs, not what drywall costs.
Access and season. Winter access in the upper valley affects how much of the day a crew spends getting to the project.

Two cost questions come up on nearly every remodel we quote. The first is whether to repair a surface or replace it. Where damage is contained, repair is usually cheaper. Where it is spread across a wall, replacing the board often costs about the same and finishes better, because you end up with two seams instead of eight. The second is how much of the home to do at once. Doing two remodels in the same wing in one visit costs less than two separate mobilizations, because the protection, the staging and the cleanup are set up once.

Our drywall services across these areas are priced the same way whether we are serving a home up in Vail Village or in Gypsum. The travel time differs, the standard does not.

Estimates are free, and you get one back within 24 hours. The number covers the cost of the project in front of us, not a square foot figure that moves once we arrive.

How to get a drywall quote

Call (970) 977-0247 or request a quote through the form. Tell us the town, the rooms involved, and whether the home is occupied. We will set a time to see the job, usually within a few days, and your written quote follows within 24 hours of that visit. The quote is free and there is no obligation. It covers the job in front of us, with the scope written down.

Questions Vail homeowners ask

Do you work for homeowners, or only for builders?

Both. A good share of our drywall jobs come straight from homeowners and homeowner associations, and we are glad to work with property managers, plumbers and electricians who need a wall closed up properly after their own work.

Can you work while we are living in the house?

Yes, and most of our remodels are exactly that. We tent the area, protect the floors and the furniture, and clean up at the end of each day rather than at the end of the job.

Will the patch show?

Not when it is done right. The texture has to match exactly, and depending on the original paint we will often repaint a whole ceiling rather than leave a touched-up area that catches the light.

Which drywall finish level do I need?

Level 4 in most bedrooms and ordinary rooms. Level 5 on large walls, around big windows, in stairwells, and anywhere with dark paint or dramatic lighting. We will tell you which rooms genuinely need it instead of quoting your whole home at the highest level.

How soon can you start?

That depends on the season and the size of the project. You get an honest date with the estimate, and the date we give you is one we hold.

What should I ask a drywall contractor in Vail before hiring?

Ask for the Town of Vail registration, a current certificate of liability and workers compensation insurance, the finish level they are quoting room by room, and who does the painting. A drywall contractor who cannot answer the finish level question room by room is quoting a price, not the work.

Are you registered and insured?

Yes. The Town of Vail requires every contractor and subcontractor to register before construction begins, to show trade competency, and to keep liability and workers compensation insurance on file. We hold that registration and carry that insurance.

Does an estimate cost anything?

No. The estimate is free, and so is the visit it takes to produce one. You get a cost for the project in writing, and nothing happens until you approve it.

Where is your office, and how far do you travel?

Our office is in Eagle. From that office we are serving homes along the full length of the valley, and regularly serving Summit County and the Roaring Fork Valley as well. Travel time is part of the cost on the far ends of that range, and we will say so in the quote rather than hiding it in a unit price.

Do you take small remodels, or only whole homes?

Small remodels are a large share of what we do. A single bathroom or one stairwell is a normal project for us, and those services are priced the same careful way as a whole home.

Do you do commercial drywall too?

Yes. Commercial construction is a large part of what we do in this county, including hotels, condominium buildings and retail.

Why Vail homeowners choose Showcase Drywall

We are a faith-based company and a straightforward one. We tell you what the job requires, we price it honestly, we arrive when we said we would, and we leave your home clean. After 26 years in the valley, most of our drywall jobs come from people who have seen what we did for someone else.