Cheap-Ass Tools: A $160 Drywall Lift
By Benjamen Johnson
If you find yourself hanging a lot of drywall, you might look into buying this cheap-ass drywall lift. It’ll hoist and position sheets of drywall precisely where you need them, so you can hang drywall by yourself. Even though you can rent lifts for $100 or less a day, for $160 you could own your very own.
This model can lift drywall to 11 feet horizontally for ceilings and 15 feet vertically for walls. It can handle a sheet of drywall up to 4 x 16 feet and 150lbs. The three large 5″ casters make it easy to roll the lift where you need to, even when fully loaded. You can assemble and disassemble it easily without tools.
This Platinum tool drywall lift seems to be the same one Harbor Freight sells, which leads us to believe it’s a re-branded import. The Amazon price says $60, but expect to pay $100 shipping and handling, because this heavy-duty, welded steel lift weighs a whole lot more than a cordless drill. The next lowest price was at Discount Tommy for $145 + $85 shipping, which still isn’t bad for a drywall lift.
Via Amazon
Drywall Lift [Discount Tommy]
Drywall Lift [Harbor Freight]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
March 5th, 2008 at 10:11 am
Hmmm…. I’ll need one someday, when I drywall my garage. Thanks for the tip on this!
March 5th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Now if you could buy it and pick it up yourself and NOT pay for shipping, THEN you would have a REAL bargain. ($160 - $99 shipping fee)
March 5th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I picked one of these up yesterday! It’s cranking 5/8″ x 4x 12 panels up to a 10ft ceiling without a hitch, that’s about the heaviest board I could throw at it. I’m pretty pleased, as others I had been pricing ran around $1200 cdn, while a local chain up here had these for $200 cdn.
I’ll be using this thing until it breaks, and if it does, I’ll add another comment.
March 26th, 2008 at 8:53 am
I have to agree - this is well worth the money. The rental for something similar at my local H.D. store is only $38 /day or something like that, and having a lift (rented or otherwise) makes the work go so fast that you can do a whole lot in a day, so you might question whether this is worth the investment. It is. I found that the bestest thing was that it took the pressure off to finish the job as fast as possible. I now have the luxury of finishing this at my leisure, and then there is no rush trip to return the tool at the end of the day. The only thing I haven’t figured out is how this lift is supposed to help hanging board on walls. Maybe I missed something, but the “head” doesn’t tilt down more than about 45 degrees from horizontal. You can’t press the board up against the wall the way you can position it against a flat ceiling. Am I using the lift the wrong way?
April 8th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Hey Bob the Drywall Guy,
At what local chain did you get your dry wall lift?
Thanks