How to make a drywall arch with your own hands

In the process of repair, many owners have the desire not only to decorate the interior of the apartment, but also to gain additional free space. An excellent solution is to replace conventional doorways with arched ones. Not all regular interior doors are used by the inhabitants of the apartment, but a lot of space is taken. Therefore, they are often simply dismantled, which does not always look aesthetically pleasing. Arches will allow you to save the existing division of the home into certain zones, save space and decorate the room. If the repair is carried out independently, then it will be useful to know how to make an arch of drywall with your own hands.

Types of arches

First of all, you should decide on the design of the future arch. This is perhaps the most difficult stage in the work: an incorrectly selected arched opening may simply not fit into the interior of the room and will look in it as a foreign object, even if made very qualitatively. Therefore, before making an arch of drywall, it is better to cut its layout at least from thick cardboard. By attaching it to the place of construction of the future drywall arch, you can verify that the project is successful or not, and make adjustments if necessary.

The most commonly used options for the design of arches (these products from drywall photo help present more clearly):

• “Classic” - the upper part is a full semicircle. Requires high doorways - at least 2.5 meters.

• The Art Nouveau style is distinguished by the fact that the semicircle of the arch sharply changes into straight lines of the opening. It is better to use when making wide openings, regardless of their height.

• "Trapezoid" - a semicircle is replaced by straight lines. Such arches look good in high doorways.

• “Romance” and “ellipse” are arches with rounded corners. The ellipse has a greater radius of curvature.

All these arches can be constructed of gypsum plaster independently. In addition, semi-arches have become very fashionable recently: only one side of the doorway is rounded in them. This allows you to find very interesting design solutions for interior decoration. How to make a half arch of drywall? Its manufacture will not differ from the installation of a conventional arch.

Marking the future design

As already mentioned, before making a drywall arch in the doorway, it is better to make a model and check how it will look in place. If the result suits you, then you can begin to markup.

On the sheet of drywall, you need to draw the end part of the arch. You can simply circle the previously made template. If it wasn’t done, then you will have to draw everything from scratch on a drywall. A rectangle is marked on the surface of the sheet, from which the future arch will be formed. On one of its wide sides (the one that will be located below) is the middle. From this point the radius of the circle of the arch will be laid aside.

As a compass, you can use various devices. This can be a piece of an inelastic cord, one end attached to a self-tapping screw screwed into the center of the hole. Chalk or pencil is attached to the other end. In the same way, you can use a piece of metal profile. By lengthening or shortening such a compass, you can draw on the drywall an arc of the arch of the necessary curvature.

In the upper part and on the sides of the doorway you need to mark the mounting points guide profiles. It should be taken into account that the future arch should be located on the same level with the wall. Therefore, they will have to be slightly shifted inward: take into account the thickness of the drywall and the finishing putty.

Frame mounting and arch assembly

The installation process of the arch will consist of the following steps:

• Chopped pieces of the guide profile are attached to the doorway. The walls and partitions in apartments are most often made of concrete or brick, in this case the profile is attached to the dowel-nails with a pitch of 20–25 cm. If the partitions are made of wood, then appropriate screws are used.

• The end sides of the arch are cut from the drywall sheet.

In a straight line, drywall is conveniently cut with a paint knife: a cardboard layer is cut along the line on one side, break the element along the formed line (you can put it on the edge of the table), and then cut cardboard with the other side. The semicircle line is most conveniently cut with an electric jigsaw. It will turn out smoother, and gypsum dusts less.

• After cutting, the edges of the slices can be cleaned with sandpaper. But it is better to postpone this procedure a little. Why - it will become clear a little later.
• Plasterboard blanks are screwed to the installed guide profiles with metal screws with a pitch of 15 cm. Hats are slightly recessed deep into the material.

• It is very rare that the doorway is symmetrical, and both end parts of the arch will fully correspond to each other. Therefore, it is better to remove the flaws formed when they are cut out of drywall when they are rigidly fixed to the profiles. To do this, take a trowel (a bar full of sandpaper) and both sides of the arch are ground at the same time.
• A guide profile curved in the shape of an arch is attached to the lower edge of the end parts. To do this, the side walls of the profile are cut with metal scissors. The smaller the bending radius - the more often it is necessary to make such incisions. The curved profile is attached to the screws. They should provide reliable fixation of the element, so you should not skimp here.

For convenience, you can use the L-shaped profile. Work must always be done with gloves: the sharp edges of the profiles can seriously injure your hands.

• Horizontal stiffeners are required to stiffen the arch structure. Their length should be less than the depth of the arch by 1–1.5 cm. In the places where the jumpers are attached, interfering petals are cut from the curved profile, after which the jumper is fixed with small metal screws. They are also called "bugs" or "fleas."
• A rectangle is cut from the drywall, forming the lower plane of the arch. Its width is selected in such a way as to cover the ends of the drywall sheets of two other planes. The length is determined using a tape measure and a cord applied to the curved profile of the arch.
• It is better to bend an element from drywall "Dry" waymaking transverse cuts at regular intervals. Only a cardboard layer needs to be cut. The stronger the bend, the smaller the distance between the notches. The fastening should start from the highest point of the arch, and then mirror the screws in both directions, gradually descending to the edges.

It’s better to visualize how you can make an arch from drywall, and the video will help you see how the finished arch looks.

Finish finish

Choosing how to finish the arch from drywall, you must first take care of the preparatory work, which necessarily includes the following points:

• With the help of a paint knife and sandpaper, all joints are processed.
• A perforated corner is attached to the lower semicircular edges of the arch. It will protect them from coloring in case of accidental impacts.
• The joints of the drywall of the arch and the surface of the wall are reinforced with fiberglass.
• The entire surface of the arch is plastered several times. First, the holes for the screw heads are smeared, after drying, a putty layer is applied to the entire surface of the arch. Putty should completely cover all additional elements: fiberglass or corners.

After finishing the putty work, you can finish the arch in accordance with the chosen design of the entire room.