It's Been a Good Run, Drywall.

It has

been

approximately 65 years since Drywall replaced lath and plaster as the primary building material of choice for making residential and commercial walls here in the United States. This has

been

pretty easy to work with compared to lath and plaster, but for DIYers and homeowners it can be very intimidating. So I'm happy to tell you about the discovery I made of a product that is much easier to use than

drywall

. This very light piece here is made of PVC. It has a very simple internal structure which actually makes it much more durable, stronger and impact resistant than

drywall

.

And the best part is that it's actually much easier to install. You just do one step and place it, you don't have to paint with mud tape texture any of that. One step and that's it. Now, from the beginning I want to let you know that I will not receive any money for doing this. This is not something I receive affiliate commissions for. Basically, I get no benefit from this from the company that makes it. It's a company called Trusscore. And in fact they didn't even contact me. That being said, when I saw an ad for this I was very curious and very hesitant.

I was skeptical that it was as

good

as they said. So I decided to contact them to ask them more about it. Now that I was able to establish a relationship with them, they were kind enough to send me all the materials that you see in this garage. They walked me through the process and taught me what's

good

and some of the dos and don'ts. This is not a perfect replacement in every way. And my biggest question was how much does it cost and how easy is it to install? So let's cover all of that because I bet you have questions like I did.

And that's the focus of this video: let's answer all the questions I had and you probably have about this material to see if it's any good. The first question I had was what is this made of? Now I mentioned before that it's made from PVC and it's really quite simple. It is 100% recyclable. It is called Trusscore because there is a structure of triangles that form its core. And that's what it's basically like a bunch of little armor that gives it its strength. So that's one of the two things it does. One makes it really strong, durable and impact resistant.

And then the surface material is thick enough to be very durable. And the second thing is that it's mostly hollow. It is approximately 40% lighter than half-inch drywall. Question number two What size are Trusscore panels? So I mentioned just a minute ago that they are half an inch thick. Now to give you a point of reference, they come in sizes about 12 feet tall. They now come in different sizes. You can do 8 10 12 14 16 18 20. And I think twelve is a little bit more than the standard size they come in. My entire garage is made with these 12 foot panels and they are 16 inches wide.

One of these panels is approximately equivalent to a four-by-four sheet. Now let's talk about weight and what that means vs. drywall. Wait. I'm going to take a sheet of drywall that I have here that weighs 70 pounds. A standard sheet of half-inch drywall weighs about 50 pounds and a half-inch ultralight drywall weighs about 38 pounds. Now the interesting thing is that core of trust that exists here. Two of these panels equal one four-by-eight sheet of drywall. But the weight difference is astronomical. But they weigh about 13 pounds each. So we're looking at about 26 pounds for a full sheet versus 38, 50, or 70 pounds for these sheets.

Now obviously there are differences. The five-eighths are denser. And you may have some questions about acoustics. Good. Can you block the sound? Can it block fire? Let's cover all that too. My next question was how does it actually attach to the wall? How do you install this? Unlike drywall, we need to start with some molding. This is a different mentality than what we are used to working with drywall and sheetrock. I used some J toppers like this one. It is called J molding because of its shape. And this installs very easily. And you're going to put this around the edges.

In some cases, you may want to use a corner piece or you can use a J edge if you prefer. It's simply a matter of preference. Now the J molding here is installed using this little flange at the top. And this is the same type of flange that you will also find on each of the panels. So that's what's going to do all the work and hold them down. And then the panels also have tongue and groove on the other side to interlock with each other. Trusscore does not recommend using any screws, much less drywall screws that have that type of bugle head shape.

Because we want it to have a nice flat bottom between the screw shaft and the head, there should be 90 degrees. So we will use different types of screws. These are called a flat head or washer head. Truss head is another name for it. But as you can see on these, they basically just have a nice flat head on the bottom. And that's exactly what we want, to have them sink and then secure everything without separating it or removing the holes in the flange. It's been pretty cold here in the garage because I haven't installed the heating and air conditioning system yet and it's the middle of winter.

So I ended up putting a nickel-sized space on each panel. And that allows for a little expansion and contraction as the climate changes. Next. How do you work with these things? How is it cut? How do you make the holes that need to be made? How do you cut it to size? Everything that? The easy answer is woodworking tools, basically things you probably already have at home, especially if you're a DIYer. Now, one of the things that I found more useful than I expected is a multi-tool and an oscillating saw like this because it allows you to get into places that are a little tricky and make some adjustments on the fly with this guy.

Now, what you need to keep in mind is that you are not using a traditional woodworking blade on this. We will use a blade to cut metal. So here you have a lot of fine, sharp teeth, rather than larger individual teeth. Same with the circular saw. There is a big difference in this: here I have a cheap saw blade for port transport. It has 56 teeth, so it is best to keep one between 40 and 60 teeth. But the important thing is that I turned it upside down. You are actually making all the cuts with the back of the carbide teeth.

It doesn't have to be anything too crazy or too expensive. Next, the jigsaw, which is always very useful when you do any type of work where you have to cut out these squares or different shapes or things like that. Again, put a metal cutting blade here, something with a lot of teeth, and it will do a great job. That's what I use there. This is the only thing I really had to pick up was this pair here. These are some traditional tin snips you could have used. And this is to cut the ornament. But I found this little set here from Crescent Wiss that's just a pair of titanium scissors.

And these were easier to use than tin snips to cut the molding to the proper length. And this did a great job. Again, I had no problems using this and it's a little more compact and easier to work with. So basically, some mostly traditional woodworking tools, with the right blades, will allow you to do everything you need. The next question I had was how hard is this? That's one of the things they advertise as super tough. And in fact, check out some of these videos they've made to prove it. They have a professional pitcher here who throws baseballs up to 72 miles per hour.

Now I can't recreate it myself. I throw like a girl and can probably hit 30 miles an hour if I'm lucky. But you can see what happens when you throw this against a trust core instead of drywall. It's a night and day difference. It just goes through the drywall or at least leaves a major dent. So Trusscore is super difficult in that sense. Another demonstration they did was hitting that thing with a hockey puck at full speed. And you can see that it potentially leaves a little wear, especially if you hit it from the side. And then you just wipe it with a cloth and that's it.

So this is really difficult. I'm sure if you try to hit this as hard as you can, you'll break your hand and probably cut it too if you end up pulling it off. So that's not a challenge. Do not try. Since this is a plastic looking material, I wondered about echo and sound transmission. I also wondered about the fire resistance of this thing. How does that compare to drywall? The short answer is that it's about the same as any half-inch piece of drywall in virtually every statistic. Now throughout this video, you'll see some secondary footage of me performing the installation myself.

I am a first time installer here. I've never done this before. I just use the manual they sent me and it helps me know exactly how to go step by step through the entire process. And while you're looking at this, I hope you can help me a little. I'm trying to reach one million subscribers by the end of this year. I'm getting closer but I know I can do it with your help. So if you like this type of content and want to learn more about DIY products, DIY tutorials, and stuff like that, be sure to hit that subscribe button.

Let's see if we can reach that million. And once we do that I'll be giving away all kinds of prizes, toolkits to different people who are subscribed to the channel. Thank you very much for your help with that. What about repairing damaged panels? How easy is it to patch or replace a panel? First of all, as we've shown above, it's highly unlikely that you'll ever need to do this. This material is so hard that it is really difficult to break. But what happens if you drill a hole, for example, to mount something and then want to remove that hole and cover it?

Well, you just use a little bit of putty. If you have a larger hole, you may need to replace the panel. And in my opinion, that's potentially one of the disadvantages of this type of material: let's say I have a hole the size of a fist, for example. Obviously I'm not going to be able to seal that, so I'll have to replace the entire panel instead of just patching it. The good thing is that it is quite easy to replace. In fact, you set the depth of your circular saw blade at just over half an inch and then you can cut along it and then you can remove that panel and remove the screws that were holding it on as well.

And then from there you caulk it, put the new panel in, lock it in place and you're done. I just mentioned that it also comes in gray panels in addition to the white ones. And that makes me wonder, what are my color options? Does it come in all colors? Can you paint it? How does it work? So the answer is that it only comes in two colors. You just have a simple light gray and you have white. In my space I went with white everywhere because that's the theme in my garage. I was able to contact the right people and find out exactly which paints work well with Trusscore and there are quite a few.

Luckily, they come in almost every Glidden brand you can get at Walmart, Behr, Sherwin Williams, and everything else. So I used some Behr that I bought and this is the Behr premium Plus. You can get it in different finishes. So here I have satin polish and I decided to use something quite dark so you can see the difference. And it was painted very easy, I only did two coats. The big difference is that we use acrylic paint for exteriors, not interiors, so it is a much thicker paint and a little different than what you are used to buying to paint interior walls.

But it looks great with two coats. This one was very fast. It was really easy and it's pretty durable and good. You can wash these things a little. So I've noticed that it sticks pretty well. So that's a good thing. It can definitely be painted. And I think if you're going to paint this, you probably want to use a sprayer or at least be very careful if you have the little lines and the little spaces for expansion because you don't want to see the white through whatever color you use. painted. So I think this is a lot like painting a shiplap.

You can do it by hand but it is much easier if you use a sprayer to do it. And sprayers are easy to rent or buy some cheap ones if you want to go that route. So yes, it can be painted. It works. I have tried it and I am happy with the result. It definitely gives you a lot more options than just white and grey... Now for the question you've all been waiting for. How much is this? I was very curious about this the moment I saw it. I thought it had to be very expensive.

Now, it's obviously not as economical as buying sheets of drywall because drywall is not a finished product. It's just the first material you put in and then you have everything you have to do afterwards. Obviously it costs much more thanthe drywall. Trustcore provides some basic figures for different space sizes on their website, as well as a calculator where you can enter the exact dimensions, colors you want to make and it will give you an estimate of how much it will cost and help you build a kit that they can essentially send to you. or what you can pick up.

A 20 x 20 garage, for example, typically costs around $4,000. I called some builder friends of mine and asked them how much do they charge or how much does it cost to finish a two car garage like this 20 x 20 space and paint it with texture and tape and all that kind of stuff? And the range was $4000 to $7000. Very comparable. Now, that's the finished space where someone does it all for you. Where this material alone costs around $4000. The big difference is, of course, that it is airtight. I can come in here with a pressure washer and spray this all out.

It's much more durable, I won't have to worry about that. And it's much more DIY friendly. So if you really have any level of skill with this kind of thing, you can come here and do it. It is not necessary to have that ability to be able to texture. It's kind of an art form. If you've ever seen someone do it. With this, almost anyone can install a product like Trusscore. Overall, it ends up being a little cheaper assuming you at least do it yourself. But the end result of the product is much more durable and it really is a pretty impressive product.

Side note: You can get this hoodie and the t-shirts I use for all kinds of fun DIY things in my merch store. The links are in the description below. And now, some additional features. I already mentioned that Trusscore is airtight, so they recommend putting some small drain holes along the edge at the bottom so you can pressure wash this. Just spray it as much as you need to get aggressive if necessary. It's already airtight, but you'll make it so that when all the water drips out, it drips onto the floor and out the garage door. On a similar note, I was passing the car wash today and I looked and what do I see on all the walls?

Armor score. This exactly. It was installed vertically and it's just these same PVC Trusscore panels throughout the interior of that particular car wash. It definitely works. That place gets sprayed constantly and wet all the time and handles great. I already mentioned how tough this material is and I think it's something that is an absolute advantage when it comes to anything compared to drywall or sheet rock. This is much more difficult. Another interesting thing is that it is antimicrobial. We've seen a lot of cases where basically fungus and different spores and things like that form on drywall when it gets wet or exposed to moisture, especially in areas where there's already a lot of moisture.

It's not a problem with Trusscore. Slat wall. That's another big advantage. Think of it as a modern pegboard and it will look good in any installation. I've seen a lot of people actually use this in basements or offices in craft rooms, things like that because the slat wall itself allows you to, it's kind of a modular system and they have all these different accessories that you can get with it. put shelves, hooks, containers or anything you want to do, which is really nice. So it looks nice and is actually very functional on the wall, rather than putting in a bunch of screws, nails, picture hangers and things like that.

Just a quick update on slat wall accessories. When I spoke to someone on the phone about this at Trusscore, they told me that we admit that our fixtures, our hooks, different things like that are a little expensive. So they sent me a list of compatible brands that you can use instead of the Trusscore brand if you want to go that route. Now, out of a little curiosity, I hopped on Amazon to see what compatible they had there and what their prices were and I found this whole set. So everything you see here in black was $36. There's a lot of these different sizes, different shapes, different lengths, all that kind of stuff.

Now, these are metal and have a rubber coating, so they are pretty sturdy and very high quality pieces. Here $36 for everything. Definitely a slightly cheaper way to do it than just buying the full price ones from Trusscore. But if you want to go for branded ones, you can obviously get them too. One of the last advantages that isn't talked about as much is the fact that it is a reflective surface, so it is actually super bright. Now you don't always want this. In some cases that could be a disadvantage, but in a space like this where you basically just want to have as much light reflectivity as possible, this is pretty impressive.

And the last added feature is that if you're not a DIYer or really trained to do this sort of thing yourself, there are plenty of certified professional installers who can handle trusted core installations for you. They go through a little bit of training and some certification and you can have someone come out and do it for you just like you would with sheetrock, drywall or anything else. What about the disadvantages? Now I have mainly focused on all the good things about this product and there are many. I actually think it's pretty impressive, but it's not perfect.

There are some things I wish were a little different in a space like this. I'm going to want to install some upper cabinets and they recommend not installing them directly against the Trusscore. If you're going to put some kind of heavy weight in there, if you're just doing some light stuff and maybe even some medium duty stuff, it's probably fine. But they recommend that if you're going to do heavy stuff, probably do it in those upper cabinets, that you really cut out the space behind the cabinets. You cut out that rectangle shape or whatever for your particular cabinets, you take some PVC pipe and you cut it into little circles, little pipes that you essentially put behind and mount them there.

Generally speaking, it's not a big deal, but there is a chance that too much weight could crush or compact it. And none of those things are good. So you want to be aware of that. I can hear you now in the comments below. Some people will say I just don't like the way it looks. That's another scam for some people. Personally, I really like it. I think it looks very clean, it looks sharp, it looks sharp. I like a lot. However, one of the biggest things that will attract people is having small spaces in between because they look like panels and not everyone likes that look.

Now, for your information, you can install this vertically or horizontally. Up to you. It's just not for everyone. That's what it all comes down to. Again you can paint it, you can decorate it a little bit but you'll still have those little spaces there. And that's not something everyone likes. So I would also consider it a disadvantage that it's not just a solid piece of wall. And honestly, I'd be very tempted to just set up a room and make it all solid with no gaps and see what the impact is. But they recommend that you don't do it.

Another possible disadvantage is the cost. Good? If you're going to DIY everything that most people don't do, but let's say you want to do it or maybe you have some experience even with mudding, taping, and paint texture, all that kind of stuff you want to do. . all that yourself. It will be less expensive to do it yourself with drywall and those other few steps than installing Trusscore. It will take quite a bit longer, especially with all the waiting between coats and all that kind of stuff. And unless you're good at it, it might not turn out that good.

But if you are good or competent at it, maybe you know some people who can help you. That will be less expensive overall. So that's it again. It's a disadvantage in some cases, not in others, but it's something to keep in mind. Now one last scam. Again, a little subjective, but something that not everyone is going to like is having to cut everything out. You don't like what you do with drywall. You can't hit a window frame, for example, or a door frame or other wall. You have to put a decorative piece there. And I think they look pretty sharp overall and are pretty subtle.

They're a little harder to see, especially if you're not just looking for them. Some people won't like that, right? Just like some people won't like the aesthetics of the Trusscore panels themselves. So that's subjective, but something to keep in mind, maybe the last big question I had when exploring this product was: is it a garage product? Is this something intended for garages or do people use it in other spaces? So I went to their website and was very surprised by what I saw there. People are using this absolutely everywhere. Look at this. People use it in bathrooms, kitchens, hallways, laundry rooms, even bedrooms and living rooms in offices and basements everywhere.

And especially when you combine the wall and ceiling boards or panels with the slat wall, you get that extra functionality that we talked about before. I wouldn't be surprised to see this start to take over more and more of the drywall market as people realize how functional it is, how durable it is, and how easy it is to install and maintain. So my question to you, what do you think? Is this something you think you would use in your home? Would you use it in your garage for example? And what are some of the pros and cons in your opinion?

So I'd love to hear what you think in the comments section below. For me I'm super happy with how this turned out. And again, regardless of the company, I make no money from anything you buy or don't buy with Trusscore. It doesn't make any difference to me. I feel like this is an interesting product that people need to know about. So thanks for watching. I love hearing what you think. Be sure to hit the subscribe button and help me reach that million subscribers by the end of this year. I'm Nils and I learn to do DIY.

Thanks for watching.