I finally got tired of looking at the visual flaws in the drywall in the upstairs guest room. The contractor that we hired to finish the drywall was not so good at taping. The flaws were not evident at first when I primed, but showed up when I painted the eggshell top coat. I thought I could live with the imperfections, but decided to slap on some more mud and feather it out to hide contractor’s handiwork.
The difference between a professional job and an amateur job
Most do-it-yourselfers, myself among them, have polka-dotted walls after the final coat of mud, whereas professional finishers usually have striped walls. Rather than just applying the mud over individual screws (for the polka-dotted effect), the pros apply a stripe of mud covering the row of screws. The reasoning is that it helps reduce the amount that the facing paper is scuffed while sanding.
Needed to be sanded more
Our contractor applied the “stripes” of mud. However, he did not feather them out enough in the guest room. The result was that the stripes were visible under the paint. In certain light, the walls looked absolutely horrible.
A couple more coats of mud….
I have come close to applying a skim coat of mud on the one sloped wall to fix the problem. The second coat of mud went on Monday and it will get sanded and primed Tuesday. Two fresh coats of paint will follow. That’s a lot of paint on new drywall: 2 coats of vapour barrier primer, one coat of standard primer, 2 coats of paint, more mud, 2 more coats of primer and 2 more coats of paint. Yikes!
Reversal of roles
If I had it to do over again, I would have had the contractor hang the drywall and I would have done the taping and finishing myself. It’s funny, because a lot of do-it-yourselfers will hang their own drywall and call in the pros to finish it. The odd angles would have been a royal pain in the butt for me to cut myself, and I figured that I was saving time by having the drywall professionally finished. However, given the project has dragged on for a year and a half due to budget issues, I had plenty of time to finish it myself.
