Tape and Finish this DRYWALL ceiling part 2
Part 2 of a drywall project. Using quick set mud with mesh tape I get this project ready to sand in less than 4 hours. A nice instructional series to show how a home owner/diy'er can do the same.
Transcript:
Tape and Finish this Drywall Ceiling Part 2
Okay, so we're back at our ceiling that we did Durabond and mesh with yesterday, and I'm going to put another coat of Durabond. I'm going to use 20 minutes, and then I want to be able to put a coat of white mud on it or Plus Three. And I can do all that today because I'm using quick-set mud, so it really facilitates that. Right now, we're going to prep this. Let me get up on my bench, and we're going to prep this by scraping. I'm just going to scrape tool marks off any ridges that I may have left, make sure that the screws are scraped as well so there's no little dimple of mud coming down there, so we get a nice smooth finish. This isn't hard. Basically, all we do is just this. Okay, so I'm getting just a little tool marks there, making sure they're flat. Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and do the rest of this ceiling, and then we're going to mix our Durabond 20, and then we'll get this coated.
Okay, so I've done all my prep. I scraped everything off, I scraped the ceilings. I'm ready to spot the screws again and get another coat on these seams. For this coat, I'm still using a six-inch knife and an eight-inch knife, but I'm going to spread my mud with an eight-inch knife, and I'll show you how I do that. I'll give you a little bit of suggestion as to how to do it as a beginner or someone who is doing the job yourself, and of course, I use my steel pan.
So, I'm going to get some mud. Okay, and the first thing I'll do is I'll go ahead and get this seam coated, and I'll show you how I do that. For me, you know, I just, I can put mud on my knife. See, I don't use a hawk control. I just use a knife and a pan. So you see how I do that? Then I put it up there and just a little bit of pressure, and I draw that knife across the seam just like that. Okay, so trying to keep it neat. If you put too much pressure on it, you squeeze the mud out, and it falls on you. Not enough pressure and it skips. Now you notice I'm feathering as well now, okay, and that's just, I just put a little bit of pressure on this side. Maybe you can zoom in, and we can see that. I just put a little pressure on that side of the knife; you can see the other side's floating. Don't be discouraged if it's hard to do; it takes practice.
Okay, so I'm going to feather this side as well. Okay, and I'm going to take just enough mud off of there so we get a nice white coat. Okay, and there's going to be one more coat that's going to go on that. So let me show you if you can't spread the mud like this, again, you can take your mud knife and just work that mud just like that, just, you want to cover that recess. Okay, and again, it's just pressure, the right amount of pressure on your knife, and then you can feather and feather. Okay, and wipe that off, and so that's what we want, we just want a nice coat on there with the edges, no ridges because you don't want to sand it, okay, so that's important. So I'm going to do a little bit more of this. Okay, that's nice. Now I'm going to go back, and I'm going to spot some screws. Now remember, I, a lot of times I'll teach beginners just to put a little bit of mud on the corner of their knife, and then they can just dab and clean that off, dab, clean that off, dab, clean it off, okay, and that'll do, uh, just a a good job. Dab it, clean it off, now what you have left, you can dab again, stab again. The key is that you, you just want to get rid of your ridges, and the Durabond doesn't shrink a lot. I'm going to fix these little spots in the drywall too. Okay, so I would spot it just like that, that was probably hard to see, and I'll do it again over here in a couple of different places. There's a little spot here, and I want to dimple that, so I'm just going to tap that with that, and that dimples that really nice.
The next step I want to do is I want to get this butt joint. I'm going to finish this seam across there. Okay, now I'm going to get this butt joint, so maybe you can come over here, right? So what I'm going to do on this butt joint because it's humped is I'm going to put a coat on this side, and I'm going to put a coat on this side, and that'll help flatten that out just a little bit. A little bit extra there, and I'm using a 10 an 8-inch knife when I finish coat it because this is not the finished coat. I'll use a 10-inch knife and I'll make it even wider. So again, you feather, feather, and it, and that takes practice. Don't be discouraged if it's a little tough. Feather and feather, and I didn't put any mud in the middle. Now I'm just going to clean that up, clean that up, and that's how I'm going to leave that butt joint. So when that Durabond sets, now I'll put a nice coat in the middle, and I'll triple that out with a 10-inch knife, and when it sands, it'll flatten that out really nice.
So let me go ahead and finish this ceiling, and then we'll be ready for our finish coat, right? So my 20 Durabond is now set, and it's ready for the finished coat, and I'm going to do that right now. What I'm going to do is use Plus Three, and this is the bucket that I'm going to mix, so down here you just slice through that little knob and pull this off. Okay, so that's how you get that off of there. It does take a little bit of effort; you just got to be patient, take one little section of a time on this lid. Just lift it off now; I don't want to mix this whole bucket of mud. I may want this bucket of mud different consistencies at different times, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to put some in my bucket, my little bucket, because this is all I'm going to need for this application, and I'm basically going to fill it up, and that way I can use I can keep this mud the consistency it is. I can mix it up for something different. I can keep it thicker. There's just a lot of different things I can do, so that's all that's all I'm going to do. I'm going to clean this up, and before I leave, I'm going to put a little bit of water on that, and I'm going to put the lid back on, so I'm not done with that. I'm going to wash the sides down, put a little water on it, and then seal that lid back again, so now this is really all the mud I want. So I'm going to get my mixer, and I'm just going to mix that up, make sure I get to the bottom really good, make sure I get it through the whole thing, okay? Now this isn't a quick-set mud. I'm not as worried about cleaning that drill bit off, and now I'm going to check the consistency to see how it is for me, and actually, um, that's not too bad, although I'm going to thin it down just a little bit. I'm not going to put a whole lot of water in there, just, just a little bit, maybe about four ounces. Make sure that water gets mixed all the way through it, okay? So I'm going to check that consistency. So that feels a lot better; it's about what I had the Durabond, remember? Okay, so that's good; that'll work nice with my knife, and now I'm ready to get started with coating, right?
So now I'm ready with my white mud, my Plus Three. I have a lot more time to work with this, so it should go very nicely. I'm going to get up, and I'm going to do a light scrape on these seams and the screws. This time I'm going to use a ten-inch knife and, of course, my six-inch knife to finish up the screws. So let's load up my pan, and I'll get up on the benches, and we'll get started with this. Okay, so a light scrape is all I'm really after. I'm going to go the length of my work area, okay? So that's all I need to do. Now I'm going to spread the mud, and that's again a nice even pressure, and if you can't do that, and then of course feather, feather, and then I'm going to wipe most of this mud off because this is just like almost like a skim coat, okay? So if you put your knife on there, it's nice and full, so if you can't spread your mud like I do, again, just on the edge of the knife, just like that. Okay, you can see it, and then just, just make sure you cover the previous coat. You can just put a little bit of mud, a little bit of mud, coat it. Okay, a little bit of mud, and then you know that's, that's, you don't have to have the straightest line; it's nice. I like to have nice straight seat lines, but that way you can feather that off and wipe most of it off, and there you go. That's it, so I'm going to go ahead and finish the seams, and we're going to do that in a time-lapse, yep, all right?
So now I'm going to do a butt joint, and we've got three butt joints here, and they are ready to go because my 20-set Durabond is dry and ready to coat over, so I have my bench, if you're working off a bench, I have my bench horizontal with the butt joint so I can work it really well. As you can see, those the coats on here helped level that off a little bit; it's not perfect, so now I'm going to put three coats of my 10-inch knife on it, and I'm going to start in the middle, okay? As you can see, I overlap it a little bit, so it's not 30 inches; it's a 10 and 10 and probably about four or five inches, so it's not a full 30 inches. I want to be able to work with it with my knife, so you take both sides, and again, it's important to feather; you don't want to have ridges because those are hard to sand, feather both sides, okay? And now I'm going to just work this butt joint until the mud's nice and smooth, okay? You gotta, you gotta try to keep that pressure on the one side of the knife; it's good practice when you feather because if you, if you put a full, a complete pressure on the whole knife, then you'll get a big ridge in the middle, and you don't want to do that. So I'm just, I got a little bit of pressure on the outside of my knife, come across now I'm just going to work it till all the air bubbles are out and it's nice and smooth, okay? You gotta, you gotta work it and be patient, okay? So I see a few little imperfections; I just want to make sure those are out of there, so that's good, again, a little pressure on the outside of the knife, not as much as when you feather it, but just enough, just so you don't scrape off the middle, and now I'm going to do this side, okay? So that's good; I'm pleased with that, so I'm going to clean this off a little bit, and that's it for that butt joint.
Okay, so we are done with the ceiling, other than sanding. Now there's a couple of things we could do. If you wanted to do a level five, we could put texture on it and scrape the texture off and leave a nice drywall coat all over the ceiling and sand it and paint it. Nowadays with the USG drywall primers that they make, you really don't need to do that; you just need to get a good primer coat on there. But the next time I'm back, we're going to sand this, and really, you know, this only took me a couple of hours, taping it and bending it the other day only took me a couple of hours. Really, I could have done all of this in one day had I used Durabond 20 on both coats, so we're going to get the mud out of our pan and our little bucket here; we're going to put it back in here. And even though it's a little bit thinner because I added some water, that's okay, and I still have three-quarters of this bucket, usable, untouched, okay? And I can mix it up; I can mix it up to any consistency I need for my next project, and I'm going to show you how we do that, so I'm just going to show you how to do that. I usually like to kind of clean the mud up a little bit inside, just kind of flatten it up a little bit, okay? Then just a little bit of water, clean those sides up, get all that off the sides; you don't want any on the sides because that'll dry, so you get a nice scrub brush and clean those, clean it up really nice. Take your time and make sure that this is all nice and clean, okay? And then you can basically just put a little bit of water on it, that's all, you don't need much, okay? So then after you do that, you want to seal this bucket so that it's tight on there again, and basically, you are done. So thanks for watching me do this project, and we'll look forward to the next one.