Cut Drywall For Electric
There are a variety of reasons you might need to cut the drywall open. Maybe you need access to the plumbing, or maybe you are adding an electric outlet. Regardless, there are a couple of ways to cut open the drywall.
The first thing to do is to make sure you will be cutting where you need to cut. For example, use a stud finder and know where the obstacles are behind the wall. Once you have that marked out, you can cut the hole. Cut the wall the minimum size necessary for you to do the job. You will likely be patching, at least partially, the area you are cutting…so cut wisely.
I know some people who use utility knives to cut drywall. This is fine if you are cutting up sheets that haven’t bee installed. In that case, it is a simple matter of cutting the paper on one side, snapping the board, and cutting through the paper on the other side. But for cutting pieces installed on a wall, I would use a drywall saw.
A drywall saw is a stiff, sharp tool that allows you to not only push it through the surface of the wall, but also to cut the drywall. Use shallow strokes here. This might require you to hold the handle close to the wall and cut at an extreme angle. This is fine, as we just want to avoid hitting a cable or pipe lying behind the wall.