Drywall jobs in Vancouver
We are always interested in hearing from boarders, tapers and people who want to learn the trade properly. The pay for each role is on this page, which is the law in BC and also the fastest way for you to work out whether to bother reading further. What follows is an honest description of the work, including the parts of it nobody enjoys.
Or email quotes@vancouverdrywallguys.ca
with the role and photos of your work.
The roles
Three ways in, with the pay attached
Where you land inside a band comes down to demonstrated speed and quality rather than the number of years on a resume. Each page explains what the day actually looks like.
- $26 to $36 an hour
Drywall installer
Hanging board on walls and ceilings across Vancouver. Layout, planning your joints, working off the drawings, and cutting around everything the other trades left you.
Read the full role - $30 to $42 an hour
Taper and finisher
Taping and finishing to GA-214 levels, including Level 5 on the jobs that need it. Coat discipline, wide butt joints, and knowing which compound to reach for in a wet Vancouver February.
Read the full role - $20 to $27 an hour
Apprentice and labourer
A way into the trade with no experience needed. Stocking, protection, cleanup and cutting, then board and mud once you can be trusted with them.
Read the full role
Straight answers
What working here is actually like
We quote fixed prices by the job rather than billing our customers hourly. That is mostly a customer benefit, but it changes something on the crew side too. Nobody is being pushed to stretch a Thursday afternoon into Friday morning to make the invoice look busier, and nobody is being told to skip a coat to claw back a bad estimate either. If a job takes longer because of something real, that is on the estimate, not on you.
Jobs are spread across Vancouver and out into North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Burnaby and Richmond. Some days you are at one address, some days two. You need a licence and your own transport for the boarding and finishing roles, and you need to be all right with a start time that assumes you drove.
The work is physical in a way that catches people out. Board is heavy and ceilings are worse. And sanding is filthy. Gypsum dust gets into your hair, your ears and every pocket you own, and no amount of containment changes what the last hour of a finishing day feels like. We contain dust properly because customers are paying for that, not because it makes sanding pleasant.
Then there is the weather. From October through March, Vancouver afternoons sit near 80 percent relative humidity, and drying-type compound simply will not give up its water at that rate. Coats that go off overnight in August can want most of two days in January. We manage it with setting compound and heat, but schedules still move, and being flexible about which site you are on tomorrow is part of the job here rather than an occasional inconvenience.
How we operate
- Fixed-price work quoted by the job, not hourly billing
- Residential, strata and property manager jobs across Vancouver
- Monday to Sunday, 8AM to 8PM, so weekend and evening work exists and is optional to discuss
- Cleanup and debris removal are part of every quote, so they are part of every day
- Founded in 2024, and the owner still finishes drywall himself
We are not a union shop, and we do not offer a benefits package. What we offer is the pay printed above and work that is booked.
Money
How we pay, and why we publish it
Two reasons. It is required, and it saves both of us a phone call that was never going to end in a job.
British Columbia's Pay Transparency Act requires every publicly advertised job opportunity to state the expected pay or pay range. So a trades ad in BC with no number in it is either older than the legislation or the employer would rather you found out late. Ours are $20 to $27 an hour for the apprentice and labourer role, $26 to $36 for boarding, and $30 to $42 for taping and finishing.
For context, WorkBC's career profile covering plasterers, drywall installers and finishers and lathers puts the provincial hourly rate at a low of $22.00, a median of $30.00 and a high of $39.84, derived from 2025 Job Bank wage data. Job Bank's own figures for drywall taper near Vancouver, in the Lower Mainland to Southwest region for the 2023 to 2024 reference period, run $21.34 low, $28.07 median and $39.84 high. Our finishing band sits above both medians and its top sits above both highs, which is deliberate.
Unionised commercial and institutional collective agreements in BC pay more than the open market does, with journeyperson taper and finisher rates above $42 an hour under those agreements. We are not a union shop, so if your priority is a collective agreement rate and a hiring hall, that is a legitimate choice and you should take it. What we can offer is residential and strata work that is booked, paid at the top of the open-market range for people who are actually fast and clean.
Hiring
How the hiring goes
Three stages, no panel interviews, and no personality questionnaire.
- 1
Send a note and photos
Email quotes@vancouverdrywallguys.ca with the role you are after, what you have been doing, and photos of finished work. Not a formatted resume, not a cover letter. Four photos of a wall you taped tell us more than two pages of claims.
- 2
A conversation with the owner
Twenty minutes on the phone or in person with Dave, who finishes drywall himself and will ask you specific questions about compound, coats and what you do when a butt joint reads. It goes both ways, so bring your own questions about how the jobs run.
- 3
A paid trial day on a real job
One day on an actual site at your band rate, paid whether or not we carry on afterwards. Unpaid trials are common in this trade and they are wage theft dressed up as an interview. We do not run them.
Questions
Before you email us
The questions people ask on the phone, answered the way we answer them there.
Do I need a ticket or trade certification to do drywall in BC?
No. There is no compulsory trade certification for drywall installation, taping or finishing in British Columbia, and any employer telling you otherwise is either confused or using it as a reason to pay you less.
What we look at instead is the work. Photos of finished walls and ceilings, what finish levels you have worked to, how you handle a butt joint, whether you can be left in a strata unit for a day without supervision. If you have a Red Seal or a SkilledTradesBC credential in a related trade, bring it, and it is a reasonable signal. It is not a requirement and it is not a substitute for what your work looks like under raking light.
Do I need my own tools?
For the boarding and finishing roles, yes. Your own hand tools, knives, hawk or pan, sanding gear and a good level. Owning your kit is one of the things that moves you up inside your pay band, because it means you turn up ready to work rather than waiting on someone else's spare.
Compound, board, tape, fasteners, protection and disposal are on us. So are the awkward items that no individual should be buying, like staging and lifts. For the apprentice role you need boots, a hard hat where the site requires one, and a tape measure. We will tell you what to add as you go rather than sending you to buy $900 of tools before your first week.
Do I need a driver's licence?
Practically, yes. We work across Vancouver, North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Burnaby and Richmond, sometimes at two addresses in one day, and start times are early enough that transit does not reliably get you there. A valid BC licence and your own vehicle make you significantly more useful, and that is reflected in where you land in your band.
If you do not drive and you are applying for the apprentice role, say so and tell us where you live. It is not automatically a no, it just narrows which jobs you can be put on.
Is drywall work year-round in Vancouver, or does it stop in winter?
It runs year-round. Almost all of it is interior work, so rain does not shut a day down the way it does for framing or roofing crews.
What the wet season does change is the schedule inside a job. Drying-type compound gives up its water to the air, and Vancouver afternoons from October to March sit around 76 to 82 percent relative humidity, so a coat that dries overnight in July can want a day and a half in January. We work around that with setting-type compound, heat and ventilation, but some jobs still stretch. It means the sequence you were expecting on Monday is not always the sequence you get, and being flexible about which site you are on that day matters more in winter than in summer.
Do you take on apprentices with no experience at all?
Yes, and the pay starts at $20 an hour for that. You begin on protection, stocking and cleanup, which is genuinely the least interesting part of the job, then move on to cutting and hanging and eventually to mud once you can be trusted not to leave a mess someone else has to sand out.
The thing we screen hardest for is not ability, it is whether you turn up. On time, every day, ready to be told you did something wrong and to do it again properly. Plenty of people with no drywall experience have worked out well. Nobody who could not manage a 7:30 start ever has.
Is the trial day paid?
Yes, at the rate we have discussed for your band, and you get paid for it whether or not either of us wants to continue. Unpaid work trials are a real problem in drywall and in the trades generally. If someone has you on their site producing work, that is employment and it is payable under the Employment Standards Act.
Ask any employer this question directly before you show up anywhere. The answer tells you a lot about the rest of the arrangement.
How do I apply?
Email quotes@vancouverdrywallguys.ca. Name the role, tell us in a short paragraph what you have been working on, and attach photos of finished work. Wide shots and close-ups of butt joints and corners are the useful ones.
We will not ask you what you earned at your last job, and no employer in BC is allowed to. The Pay Transparency Act prohibits asking applicants about their pay history, so if you get that question somewhere else, you now know it is not permitted.
Do you hire subcontractors as well as employees?
Get in touch and we will talk about it. Both arrangements exist in this trade and which one fits depends on the person, the work and how it would be structured, so it is not something to settle by reading a web page.
One warning worth passing on regardless of who you work for. Whether you are an employee or a contractor is decided by how the work actually happens, not by what the paperwork calls you, and people get caught out on that by the CRA and by WorkSafeBC. Ask questions before you accept a label.
Interested in any of the three?
Email quotes@vancouverdrywallguys.ca with the role, a short note about your work and photos of a finished wall or ceiling. Or call and ask whatever this page did not answer.
7 days a week, 8AM to 8PM