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Drywall installer job in Vancouver
$26 to $36 an hour
Full time, Vancouver and the Lower Mainland
Hanging board on residential and strata jobs, mostly in Vancouver, sometimes across the bridges. We are not advertising a specific vacancy with a countdown on it. We are always interested in boarders who plan their layout before they start cutting, so if that is you, get in touch and we will talk.
604-227-4559
Or email
[email protected]with photos of board you have hung.
The work
What the day actually involves
Boarding is a planning job that happens to involve heavy lifting. The lifting is obvious and the planning is what separates a wall a finisher can deal with from one they curse at.
- Reading the job before you cut anything
Drawings, the finish level named in the quote, which walls are rated and which board goes where. Moisture-resistant in the bathroom, Type X on the separations, standard everywhere else. Getting that wrong on a strata job means pulling sheets back off.
The finisher inherits every decision you make here. Joints kept off the corners of doors and windows because that is where framing movement cracks them. Sheet ends staggered. Butt joints landed where there is room to feather them out wide, and not in the middle of a wall that gets afternoon light across it.
Board carried to the right rooms on the right floors, ceilings first, then walls from the top down. Twelve-foot sheets where they fit, because fewer joints is less work for everyone downstream. On a Vancouver walk-up with no elevator, the load out is half the day.
- Cutting around everything in the way
Boxes, ducts, sprinkler heads, pot lights, a plumbing stack nobody drew. Tight cuts and no oversized holes stuffed with mud later. This is the part where speed and accuracy stop being the same skill.
Screws set to depth, not spun through the paper, and spaced so the board moves with the framing instead of against it. Most of the nail pops we get called out to repair on other people's work started here.
- Leaving a site someone can work in
Offcuts out, floors swept, protection back down before you go. Gypsum is banned from the garbage across Metro Vancouver so scrap gets handled properly rather than dumped in a bin.
Requirements
What you need to have
Two years or more hanging board, and work you can show us. No certification, because British Columbia has no compulsory trade certification for drywall, so nobody here is going to ask you for a ticket that does not exist.
Your own hand tools. A valid BC driver's licence and your own transport, since we work across Vancouver, North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Burnaby and Richmond and the day sometimes starts at one address and ends at another.
Enough English to work safely alongside electricians and plumbers who are still on site, and enough judgement to stop and ask when a wall does not match the drawing rather than boarding over the problem. That happens more often than the drawings would suggest.
What puts you at the top of the band
- You lay out a room yourself and get the joints in the right places
- You hang ceilings clean and level, which is where most boarders lose time
- You can be left in an occupied strata unit for a day without anything going wrong
- You own your tools and turn up with them working
- You cut tight around services instead of leaving gaps for the finisher to fill
- You can also tape, which makes you useful on the small jobs
Years on a resume do not move you up this band. Speed with a clean result does, and one day on a real job tells us which of those you have.
Before you apply
Two things a normal job ad would leave out
Better that you know now than find out on a Tuesday in November.
The load out is a real part of the job
A 4 by 12 half-inch sheet is roughly 80 pounds and 5/8 Type X is heavier. Vancouver has a lot of older walk-ups, tight stairwells and basement suites with a turn at the bottom, and on those jobs getting the board into the room takes longer than hanging it.
We book elevators and use lifts where they fit. Plenty of the time they do not fit, and then it is two people and a plan.
Other trades run late and it lands on you
Boarding sits after framing, rough electrical, plumbing and insulation, and behind an inspection on a lot of jobs. When any of that slips, your Wednesday moves.
We do not deal with that by having you sit and wait unpaid. We move you to another job. It does mean the week you were told about on Monday is not always the week you get, and if that would frustrate you badly, this trade is going to frustrate you badly.
Questions
About This Role Specifically
What pay can I expect as a drywall installer here?
$26 to $36 an hour. That is the advertised range, published because BC's Pay Transparency Act requires it on any public job ad.
The bottom of the band is where someone lands who can hang board competently but needs the layout planned for them. The top is for someone who walks a room, works out the sheet layout themselves, gets it right and does it fast. Owning your tools, holding a valid licence and being able to work unsupervised on an occupied strata site all push you up.
Do I need to be able to tape as well as hang?
No. Plenty of good boarders do not finish and have no interest in it, and that is fine. The two jobs reward different things: hanging rewards planning and pace, finishing rewards patience.
If you can do both, say so, because it is useful on smaller jobs where sending two people makes no sense. It is not a condition of the role and we will not quietly turn a boarding job into a finishing one.
How much lifting is involved?
A lot, and we would rather tell you now. A 4 by 12 sheet of half-inch board is around 80 pounds and 5/8 Type X is heavier again. Ceilings mean getting that overhead, and while we use lifts and deadmen where they fit, plenty of Vancouver bathrooms and hallways will not take a lift.
If you have a back or shoulder issue you are managing, tell us during the conversation rather than on the trial day. Some jobs load in easily and some are a third-floor walk-up with a turn in the stairs.
What tools should I bring on the trial day?
Your own hand tools, a good level or straightedge, a utility knife, a rasp, a tape and a screw gun if you own one. Boots and a hard hat where the site calls for it.
Board, screws, adhesive, protection, staging and disposal are ours. If your gun dies on you we have spares, but turning up with nothing and expecting to use ours all day is the kind of thing we notice.
How do I apply for the installer role?
Email
[email protected], put the role in the subject line, and write a short paragraph on the kind of work you have been hanging. Houses, basements, condos, commercial fit-outs.
Then attach photos, and the useful ones here are of board hung and not yet taped. Ceilings, a wall with the joint layout visible, a tight cut around a run of boxes. That tells us more about you than a finished photo does.
Send us photos of board you have hung
Email
[email protected] with the role in the subject line and a short note on what you have been working on. The trial day is one day on a real job and it is paid.
604-227-4559
7 days a week, 8AM to 8PM
