How Vinyl Beads Helped a Texas Drywall Crew Finish Homes Faster

The project: A master-planned community in the ‘Wild West’

In Aledo, Tex., just west of Fort Worth, an expanding master-planned community — spanning about 1,000 acres and encompassing hundreds of homes — has tapped numerous builders to meet the demands of the rapidly growing area.

The houses in this region are being built quickly — and sold just as quickly — so builders needed to rely on subcontractors who could do high-quality work on an extremely tight schedule. For the drywall work on many of these homes, they tapped Texan Drywall, a team from Houston that recently expanded into the booming Dallas-Fort Worth market.

“Speed is everything around here, especially down here in Texas — it's the Wild West, as a lot of people say,” says Texan Drywall City Manager Seth Green. “Time is money, and we've got to get these houses done as fast as possible. The faster our crews can work, the more money everybody's making from top to bottom. It's very important to us.”

For this job, Texan Drywall needed building materials that could be installed quickly, were easy to use for finishers of all skill levels and, in the end, would look great for years to come. And they chose several Trim-Tex products to help them tackle this enormous project.

The products: ‘We prefer the vinyl’

For Texan Drywall, although the houses in this master-planned community varied in floor plan and size, the drywall finishing work didn’t change much from property to property: lots of rounded corners and lots of 45° inside angles running along the ceilings.

Rounded corners remain especially popular throughout Texas, adding a dash of Southwestern flavor to any room. To achieve this look, Texan Drywall prefers the tighter radius of the ⅜” Medium Bullnose Corner Bead.

“In the past, the ¾” [Large] Bullnose was more popular,” Seth tells us. “This ⅜” Bullnose is a slimmer profile, which a lot of homeowners seem to like, and the builders like as well. It's somewhat more modern without getting that 90° hard edge; you still have a little bit of a curve, but it's not as dramatic.”

Meanwhile, for all the off-angle inside corners created by tray ceiling designs on the top floors of the two-story homes, the crew alternated between two solutions: the paper-covered Fast Edge® Roll (pictured above) and the all-vinyl Adjustable Inside Corner Bead (pictured below).

Both beads accomplished the same thing — providing straight, durable lines along inside corners with enough flexibility to adjust to imperfect framing and flex over time to accommodate slight building movement — but each has its own advantages. Some Texan Drywall finishers prefer the rigidity of the Adjustable Inside Corner Bead. Others love Fast Edge Roll’s ability to cover long runs without having to switch beads. In either case, the result was the same: top-notch ceilings. (You can learn more about the similarities and differences between these two solutions here.)

“As far as all the 45[-degree angles], especially in a lot of production building, sometimes you have some issues with just consistency of 45s, or it might be slightly off,” says Seth. “[Trim-Tex beads] really allow us to get that straight edge. Especially whenever you get that first coat on there, you can use the knife to move it a little bit up and down however you need, to see fit to get that straight edge. That's what really helps. Whereas tape, it really sucks back into that 45, and it's going to adhere to it — whatever that 45, whatever the true frame is, that's what it's going to go back to. The plastic allows for a straighter edge.”

(Installation Note: As shown above, crews installed Trim-Tex Adjustable Inside Corner Bead by embedding the bead in joint compound before applying an additional coat of compound. Although this method is commonly used in the region and has produced satisfactory results for the customers featured in this case study, it may not reflect Trim-Tex’s recommended installation method. Trim-Tex specifies applying two coats of Trim-Tex 847 Spray Adhesive and fastening the bead with ½” staples spaced every 6–8” along the mud legs. The installation depicted should not be construed as an endorsement of, or substitute for, Trim-Tex’s published instructions. To ensure proper installation and product performance, please follow the complete installation recommendations for Adjustable Inside Corner Bead available here.)

“Especially for residential applications, we prefer the vinyl for the corner beads, the bullnoses, the adjustable 45s, all that — we prefer the vinyl,” Seth tells us of how they chose their finishing beads. “Trim-Tex does a great job for us as providing a wide variety of options for different trims that we can use, decorative trims to make a space just really feel unique and like a home.”

The payoff: ‘A product we can rely on’

For Texan Drywall and many similar subcontractors, the value of using these vinyl corner beads and accessories from Trim-Tex came down to three major benefits: durability, speed and flexibility.

Durability is probably the best-known advantage of using vinyl corner beads over metal ones. While extreme impact can permanently dent a metal bead out of shape, requiring complete replacement, vinyl materials are far more resilient.

“[Durability] matters for a homeowner wanting to make their home there for years to come,” says Reese Mason, also a City Manager with Texan Drywall. “I think what's really important to us is, on the job, after we get in, you've got other trades coming in doing hardware, doing trim, cabinets, all that. And for that, being able to withstand a bump or something in the wall, these pieces seem to really hold and withstand that. Which allows for less work on the backend for us — it’s a product that we can rely on.”

Another key advantage is that, as a controlled system, high-quality vinyl materials can move and flex over time. Especially in areas where temperatures can vary wildly throughout the year, different building materials expand and contract at different rates, which can leave unsightly cracks in the drywall finish. With flexible, high-quality vinyl beads like these — particularly in high-risk areas such as vaulted ceilings or the tray ceilings found here — homeowners may enjoy a crack-free finish for years to come.

“The people, the finishers, the drywall tapers, well, the work is much faster, cleaner,” says Drywall Finisher Cristian Esquivel (translated from Spanish). “Builders like it better. In the same way, for us, we avoid problems — unnecessary expenses in the future when the houses move a little, since they tend to break. But in this case, with this type of material, not at all.”

Finally, for a drywall crew like this one that needs to move fast without sacrificing quality, Trim-Tex beads like these can’t be beat.

“These guys are just so quick with it now,” says Seth. “They've been using it for years, too. They're very familiar with it, especially our crews that we've had up here for five years now. They're familiar with the house, the product, and what goes into each thing. They can get in and out. As you'll see here, it just took us about half an hour for one guy to put up all the stuff here in this one room. It's very fast.”

Thank you to all the folks at Texan Drywall for inviting us to check out their excellent work; if you need a top-notch crew in and around DFW, Houston or San Antonio, you can find out more and contact them here.

The beads featured in this story are just the tip of the iceberg. To see the full range of products Trim-Tex manufactures to help drywallers like these, check out our free catalog. Hit the button below to get started.