Using A Drywall Template

Drywall sheets are heavy and awkward to move. Their unwieldily nature can be especially difficult when they need to be mounted in confined areas.

I had a garage heater installed in the townhouse that I’m renovating. The heater was suspended using rods that were attached to rafters. I was losing a lot of heat, and I wanted to close off the area using wallboard.

The rods presented a problem, and the only solution that I could come up with was to use a template to make precision cuts in the wallboard. I used a large piece of cardboard as my template, which worked out well. See the images below for more details.

You can see two of the multiple rods that mounted my garage heater.
Clearing out some old nails in preparation for the new wallboard ceiling.
This large piece of cardboard served as my template. I marked where the furnace supporting rods were on it.
I cut on the necessary slots and then used the template to mark those areas on the wallboard.
Here I am using a RotoZip tool to cut our the slots on the wallboard.
A custom cut piece of wallboard
Placing the wallboard above the garage furnace.
Securing the wallboard using screws.
Using another template for the furnaces vent allowed me to cut this second piece of wallboard.
Securing the second piece of wallboard.
I added a few more pieces to help contain the heat. I also used some temporary cardboard on the bottom row. The garage is significantly warmer with this simple modification!