Randy’s Painting & Drywall

Coopersburg, Lehigh County

Drywall installation & repair in Coopersburg, PA.

Half the borough's homes date from 1950 to 1979, and close to half of Upper Saucon's from 1990 on. Between them, the drywall runs from settled midcentury rooms to great rooms two stories tall.

Request a private consultation Call or text (484) 546-3660
The same wall repaired and painted a soft beige, a wooden trunk sitting against it.
After: the same wall, repaired and painted. Her photograph.

Drywall installation & repair for Coopersburg homes

Upper Saucon Township wraps almost all the way around the borough, and it has been building fast: its population rose about 42 percent from 2000 to 2020, and close to half its homes date from 1990 or later. Houses from those years are now old enough for their first real round of drywall repair, and the two-story great room, nearly standard in suburbs of the period, is where much of it lands.

The borough itself is older and smaller. Nearly a third of Coopersburg's homes predate 1940, many of them in the historic district along Main Street, and about half went up between 1950 and 1979, as the population grew by more than half from 1950 to 1970. Those midcentury rooms have their own list: doorknob holes, anchors pulled out of walls, a crack that returns over the same closet door every winter.

Coopersburg

Two-story great rooms around a midcentury borough

A great room puts drywall two stories high beside rooms of ordinary height, often under a run of tall windows. Repairs up there are a different job from a bedroom patch: they are reached from staging, and low light from those windows crosses the wall for much of the day, so a patch has to be feathered far wider than its size suggests or it reads from across the room.

Along Main Street the drywall meets older work. The Coopersburg Historic District holds 175 buildings in Federal, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles, and the plain brick houses on State and Fairview Streets date from about 1900 to 1910. Rooms that age were plastered, so a remodeled kitchen or an added bath leaves new board butting into a harder, thicker wall, and the board is brought out to meet it before the seam is built up, feathered and primed.

Inside a geodesic dome: smooth white faceted walls and ceiling with hexagonal skylights.
Custom drywall in a geodesic dome.

Worth knowing

  1. Repairs before the repaint

    Pops and cracks on a tall wall are repaired before it is repainted, so the wall is painted once over finished work instead of touched up from a ladder later.

  2. The same closet door every winter

    In the borough's 1950s to 1970s houses, a crack that keeps returning at a door corner is opened, bridged with mesh tape in setting-type compound and refinished, rather than filled again.

  3. Check with the borough on additions

    National Register listing doesn't restrict a private owner on its own, but local rules can apply, so an addition that changes the outside of a Main Street house is cleared with the borough first.

The work

How the work goes

The same care on every job, in every town. The full guide to drywall installation & repair.

A wall opened at its base, showing damaged drywall, studs and wiring above a pulled-back carpet.
Before: the wall opened up. Sharon Marrone’s photograph, from her Google review.

  1. Look at the cause

    Randy looks at the damage with you and explains what it will take. Where water is involved, the leak has to be fixed and the framing dry before anything is closed up. The walkthrough and written estimate are complimentary.

  2. Cut back to sound material

    Damaged board is cut out to clean, square edges, often back to the framing, so the new piece has something solid to fasten to. Damaged studs are replaced while the wall is open.

  3. Hang it tight and flush

    New board is cut to fit and screwed to the framing with its edges level with the old, because a high edge leaves no room for tape and compound. Wide gaps are filled with setting-type compound before taping.

  4. Tape and coat

    Joints are taped and built up in thin coats, feathered wide. Torn paper is sealed with an oil- or shellac-based primer first, since water in the compound would raise it into bubbles.

  5. Blend, prime, paint

    Texture is matched where the wall has it. The repair is primed so it won’t show as a dull patch, and the wall is painted corner to corner so the sheen reads evenly.

Questions

Drywall installation & repair, Coopersburg.

The great room in our Center Valley house has a long crack partway up the wall. What causes it?

Usually shrinkage in the framing. The band of floor framing at second-story height dries and narrows over the house's first years, and drywall spanning it cracks or ridges along that line. By the time a house is fifteen or twenty years old the movement has generally stopped, so the joint is opened, bridged and feathered wide, and it tends to stay closed.

Great rooms are open to the rest of the house. How is dust kept down during a repair?

With no door to close, the work area is sealed off with plastic sheeting from floor to ceiling, floors and furniture are covered, and sanding is kept to the repair itself. The open plan lets dust travel to the kitchen and the upstairs hall, so the setup matters as much as the patch.

Can drywall be hung for a new room over the garage or in an addition?

Yes. New walls and ceilings are hung, taped, finished and painted to match the rest of the house once framing, wiring, insulation and inspections are complete. The finish is chosen for the room's light, so the new space doesn't look plainer than the rooms it joins.

More in Coopersburg

Other services here.

  1. Level 5 drywall finishA skim coat over the entire surface, for walls that hold up under raking light and dark paint.
  2. Skim coatingRough, patched or uneven walls resurfaced smooth, often after wallpaper comes down.
  3. Plaster repairCracked, loose and failing plaster in older homes, repaired and made sound.
  4. Interior paintingWalls, ceilings, trim, doors and millwork, prepared properly and finished clean.
  5. Exterior paintingSiding, trim, porches, stucco and brick, prepared to stand up to Pennsylvania weather.
  6. Drywall texture matching & removalTexture matched so repairs disappear, applied where you want it, or taken off for a smooth wall.
  7. Popcorn ceiling removalOld acoustic texture taken down and the ceiling finished smooth.
  8. Wallpaper removalOld wallpaper and wall linings stripped without tearing up the wall beneath.
  9. Wood stainingDecks, porch floors, doors and trim, inside and out, stained by hand.

Consultation

Request a private consultation.

Private walkthrough & written estimate, complimentary. Tell us a little about the house and the rooms, and Randy will be in touch to arrange a time.

Hours
Monday – Friday8:30 AM – 5:30 PMSaturday10 AM – 3 PMSundayClosed
Service area
Easton, Bethlehem, Allentown and the greater Lehigh Valley; Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Fully insured — proof on request. Residential and commercial.

Randy’sPainting & DrywallReply card
The project
Preferred contact

Walkthrough & written estimate, complimentary.