On Oct 25, 6:57 pm, Rick Blaine wrote:
" wrote:
Put on a dust mask and start tearing the drywall off. It's not that
bad a job, drywall is cheap, and you might be surprised at what you
find inside. I was in a similar situation with an old house once and
when I took off the drywall there were a couple of studs that were
completely destroyed. The only way you can be sure is by removing the
drywall.

I agree. I _hate_ working with drywall for the dust & weight, but it isn't hard
or expensive for a single room. My issues is I always screw up the textured
finish so it never quite matches the rest of the room.

--
"Tell me what I should do, Annie."
"Stay. Here. Forever." - Life On Mars

I think a point that a couple of you may have missed is that it's not
the drywall that the OP is concerned with, it's the baseboard and
carpet. In other words, to remove the drywall would mean removing the
baseboard which in turn might impact the carpet installation.

That said, I agree that proper inspection and repair of the studs is
not possible without removing the drywall, regardless of how much
downstream work this causes.

Unless of course he wants to try it from the outside. ;-)