Drywall Contractor in Sherman Oaks, CA

The streets north of Ventura Boulevard were laid out for tract housing in the years right after the war, and most of what stands there today is a single story ranch of roughly 1,400 to 1,900 square feet on a generous lot. Those houses were built with two by four exterior walls, sixteen inch stud spacing, and interior partitions that carry almost nothing. That combination is why so much of our Sherman Oaks residential work involves opening the plan up. We size and install the flush beam or dropped header, transfer the load down through new posts to a pad footing, and then reframe the ceiling plane so the finished drywall reads flat across the old and new framing rather than telegraphing the seam.

South of the boulevard the ground rises fast into the Santa Monica Mountains, and everything about the job changes. Lots there sit inside the City of Los Angeles Hillside Area, so the Baseline Hillside Ordinance governs how much house the slope will carry and how much dirt you can move to get it. Any project that exports or imports 1,000 cubic yards or more needs haul route approval before a grading permit can issue, and that review looks at street width, grade, truck size, hours of operation and staging. On a narrow canyon street it also decides how we stage lumber and board, because a 53 foot trailer is not turning around above Mulholland.

Additions here are usually vertical rather than horizontal. When a hillside lot has no room left at grade, the second story goes on top of an existing single story, and that means shoring the roof, verifying the existing foundation and shear walls can carry the new load, and framing a new floor system over occupied space. We build those in stages so the house stays weather tight, sheathe and paper before the roof comes off in earnest, and keep the interior drywall demolition contained to the rooms directly beneath the new work. Detached ADUs at the rear of the lot are the other common project, and the city ADU Standard Plan Program has made those far more predictable to schedule.

Along Ventura Boulevard itself, the commercial frontage runs almost the entire length of Sherman Oaks and falls inside the Ventura/Cahuenga Boulevard Corridor Specific Plan, which sets design and use rules block by block and includes a Pedestrian Development District on both sides of the boulevard in Sherman Oaks. Storefront work there is mostly interior remodel of small tenant bays in one and two story buildings from the 1950s and 1960s. We build the demising walls in twenty gauge or twenty five gauge steel stud, run rated corridor and shaft assemblies where the occupancy requires them, and hold finish tolerances tight enough that raking storefront light does not turn every butt joint into a shadow line.