Not Your Average Beginner Drywall Taping Tips
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Ready for drywall taping and floating.
If you’re following along on Instagram you’ve noticed we’ve been rebuilding a bedroom. In the process, we are also educating the homeowner on how to hang, tape and float drywall–explaining our techniques and thought processes as we go along with a few videos from YouTube. However, there are a few unusual, easily overlooked, and game changing beginner drywall taping tips that you won’t find on YouTube…or at least all in one video.
Thin the mud.
This is the first room when I’ve had absolutely zero bubbles under the tape.
0.
Z-E-R-O!!!
Even the gentleman we’re teaching that has never taped and floated before had zero bubbles under his tape. He even did all of the corners and ceiling (in the closet). That’s crazy!
It’s not luck. It’s thinner mud.
If you’re using pre-mixed mud straight out of the box it’s like the consistency of refrigerated cookie dough (which we all know the consistency because we eat it before cooking it, right?). Trying to run mud of that consistency into a straight line or, even worse, a corner, is a test of your sanity.
Not only that, but since it does not have much water it is less likely to bond to the tape. When the mud does not attach properly to the tape it creates a bubble.
I attribute this knowledge drop by noticing a gentlemen’s mud on a particular YouTube video. The dollop of mud on his hawk was some of the thinnest mud I’ve ever seen! This is in contrast to what you scoop out of the box of joint compound–you can basically create the box on a hawk. That’s when it clicked: you mix in water to thin out the premixed mud.
Premixed joint compound gives you more consistent quality.
I’m not someone who automatically approves of spoon feeding, but even I’ve come to appreciate the value of premixed joint compound. Our drywall jobs are spaced apart. Premixed joint compound gives us the ability to control the quality of the mud on the first try.
If it is any consolation, since you are thinning the joint compound, you are actually buying concentrate. It is like your orange juice out of the freezer section at the grocery store where you are actually going to be drinking a couple liters, not just a twelve ounce gooey smoothie.
Let the mud rest.
Run the mud through a mud mixer, stop for a minute, then run it again. This allows the mix to meld and break up chunks of unmixed joint compound. You’ll have less difficulty with a smoother mix when you apply it to the wall.
Side note here: I prefer this style paddle as you can see below. Cheaper and more versatile to use than a joint compound only paddle.
No hand mixing here–you are going to get your workout on the walls. A solid mud paddle is a must-have!
As you can see, we also use this paddle to mix mortar and small concrete jobs.
Pre-wet the paper tape.
This drywall taping tip is one I learned from my friend where he first taught me how to tape and float. A professional had taught him to dip the tape in a bucket of water and drag your fingers on both sides, getting the main water off the tape.
Rather than asking the mud to attach to a dry surface, moistening the tape allows the bond to form faster between the tape and the mud.
This is not as big of an issue in a more humid environment as the mud bed stays wet longer. It is absolutely essential in an arid climate (I’m looking at you–my home in Arizona). Although this room is in the humid metro of Houston, I still applied the water and allowed it to air dry a little while setting up the mud bed. By the time I was ready to apply it, the tape was merely damp and embedded beautifully.
Wear shin guards or knee pads to protect your shins.
The vast majority of DIY rogues are not going to set up a scaffold or figure out how to walk on stilts. That leaves us with our assortment of handy step stools and 6 ft ladders we already own.
While we have a Frankenstein 4′ x 8′ scaffold, we used the homeowners assortment of DIY “scaffolds” for this small job.
If you don’t have something protecting your shins as you lean up against the next steps, you’ll know the next day.
If you are going to lay tile and use knee pads, you get a second use out of the deal.
Don’t feel like you have to tape an entire wall at once.
There is nothing as depressing as setting a mud bed up on the far end only to find the mud at the beginning is already drying over. How can you embed tape in dry mud?!? At that point you will be asking for those dreaded bubbles you have to fix later.
This is especially true for ceilings. Every trip up and down a ladder takes time.
Even if you break a ceiling up into three sections, like I did below, after the second coat you aren’t going to know where one piece ended and another started. The tape is not structural–it is to seal up the gaps and make the room air tight.
So don’t feel bad if you are not able to go at lightning speed. Do a quality job where you don’t have to spend as much time making it look better later.
Whatever you do not clean off when the mud is wet will take you ten times longer to clean off later.
This drywall taping tip is an obvious one if you’ve ever done drywall before but one that cannot be stated with enough emphasis to anyone who is putting up drywall for the first time.
It is so much easier to scrape off an errant line of mud then to try and clean it off later after it’s hardened. You want to minimize your time knocking off dried chunks with a drywall knife or removing entire swaths with a sanding block. You also have the added benefit of less dust in the air because you’re not sanding as much.
For us non-professionals, a lot of the way we compromised on our current patch of work before moving on is deciding what kind of a blemish is the best of the bad choices. For instance, rather than having a long scratch mark which requires the next level to correct, I would rather go the opposite direction of the tape because a small ridge is easily knocked down with a drywall knife. It’s all about making the best choice to keep you from hating life caused by laying down another layer or spending too much time with a sanding block.
With one swipe of a blade, I can knock these two ridges back in two seconds. If instead, I had a divot going down parallel to the corner, which is what I was fighting, I’d have to sand it all down or go back with another layer of mud.
When applying Level 2 and Level 3 on a corner, you don’t have to do both sides at once.
CORNERS ARE HARD!
After you use the corner tool on level 1, you end up using a flat knife to float out the subsequent layers.
If you try to do both sides of a corner there is a constant struggling to avoid the mud buildup in the corner without messing up all your beautiful flat work. You end up doing one side and making it perfect, while the other side is bad. So then you attempt to smooth out the second side and inevitably mess up the first side. Repeat until you are pissed off / defeated / the mud dries to a point so both sides look bad because you can’t stop fiddling with it.
One answer is to only do one side at a time. That way you can scrape any overage off the second side. By the time you are done with the rest of the room the first side will be solid and you can do the second side. At least at my speed it is dry or I’m willing to wait so I don’t mess up the first side.
Hand cream is your new best friend.
Limestone in joint compound will suck the water out of your hand just like it does on the wall.
I am a fan of Aveeno hand cream (<–yes, that’s a link to a double pack of huge containers like I have–it’s that good!) after my friend introduced me to this wonderful product after a particularly bad dry hand day of tiling. It’s worked better then any other kind of hand cream. I’ve tried quite a few.
Whatever your favorite is, have it on hand (haha, pun intended!).
Personal protection equipment is a must!
Wear a respirator.
This is especially important when you are sanding and wiping down the latest level. You don’t want all that drywall dust coating your lungs.
We like our Honeywell half mask respirators. <–Note the listing does not come with filters because there are different kinds–particulate versus vapor. So you’ll have to add a particulate filter like this P100 we use on to the tab. Also note they come in different sizes. I can also wear my husband’s large size and they pass the “no air coming through” test. They are as comfortable as masks get since they are silicone.
Bonus points if you use a HEPA filter to keep the dust down. It has the extra benefit of keeping dust from infiltrating the rest of the house.
We also outfit our Rigid wet dry vac with a OSHA HEPA adapter kit. The Rigid HEPA kit is compatible with a huge list of their wet dry vacs (also listed on that link).
Think about containment.
Taping and floating creates dust. There will be a fine layer of dust on EVERYTHING in your house unless you contain it properly.
Seal off the door / wall off the area and seriously consider buying or renting a HEPA air scrubber.
While we have Phoenix HEPA’s, this BlueDri HEPA air scrubber is more economical and is still very effective.
Don’t wear your nice shoes.
I’m not talking about your high heels. 😉 I’m talking about your everyday running shoes or Tevas. Don’t think, “It’s just one last layer.” Actually, if you wear the shoes you’re about to throw away, you probably won’t even get a speck on them.
Or maybe you won’t…
Your tools will rust.
Let’s be real. You don’t want to spend a lot when you might lose / donate / give away your tools in between unplanned drywall jobs. If you are in that category or a weekend warrior, you are probably buying the more economical tools at Home Depot or Lowe’s.
Clean and shiny off the shelf, the steel on the blades and mud boxes rust when you clean them after the first use. It’s not you, it’s a property of steel.
There are a couple options here:
- Upgrade to stainless blades.
- Try out WD-40 as a cleaning agent after wiping them down.
- Clean your tools just before using them, instead of after the job is complete.
If you do clean it off at the end of the night, it’s the microscopic specs of water that stays on the blade even after you clean it in water and attempt to dry it off. You can clean this of with a sanding block.
The same goes for a mud pan. The classic red tray has a steel metal lip. It too will rust.
Or you can go for a shiny stainless mud pan. Either way, we like the bigger 16″ mud pans–better for the longer drywall knives.
Unfortunately, I can’t find the plastic 16″ mud pans, as photographed, online on either Home Depot or Amazon (the link above to Home Depot is only 14″). Maybe they started getting replaced with the stainless mud pans? The nice part about the stainless pans is they are curved on the bottom so you aren’t at the end of the mud in the pan scraping into the corners. We’ll be upgrading to those soon.
Expect all aspects of drywall–from hanging to floating–to take longer than you think.
That eight minute YouTube video makes taping and floating look slick and easy. They are professionals.
You and I are not.
You really have to admire the people that do this day in and day out. They can probably do a room in fifteen minutes with their bazooka. In comparison, it takes me fifteen hours to embed the tape and then go back and put level one on because I’m not confident the tape will not slip (slight exaggeration, but with the extra dry time…maybe). To me it is worth it to wait and keep that nice clean tape line and add in that extra step.
Expect it will take longer than you think. We are not professionals. You are going to go up and down your ladders. You’re going to spend extra time moving the ladder three times down the wall. There will be more mud dropping on the floor you have to scrape off later.
As a beginner, add in an extra day or two to the schedule to go over areas to make it look just right. Take the time to wipe down the walls after sanding to make sure you can see everything without dust. When paint goes on you’ll see any and all flaws you missed.
It all adds up.
As a beginner, steer away from the quick set “hot” mud which cures in a shortened time frame.
“Hot” mud is a trade term for joint compound with a faster than average cure time. There are a few different kinds of speed set. 90 minute and 45 minute are common.
There are a few gotchas.
- Now you have a time limit on top of inexperience.
- You can’t mix old mud with new mud. With regular mud if I am running short I can add some more mud, water, mix and get back to it. Hot mud does not mix well–it will put chunks of hardening mud into the new, softer mud.
Speed up dry times with a dehumidifier and fans.
This tip is how to get around slower speed times instead of going for the fast set joint compound. A dehumidifier warming up the room and removing the liquid from the mud along with a wind vortex will drop the time needed between layers. A hepa filter is a good idea with a vortex in an active drywall installation space too (plus keeping the swirling dust down!).
All this equipment might mean we have a restoration company, but it certainly helps in terms of rebuilding / remodeling a room. Even an everyday dehumidifier and oscillating fans will help get the project rolling faster.
We use B-Aire Fans. Small and not too terribly expensive in terms of high velocity fans, these fans have a few different settings and are able to point along the floor, at a 45 degree angle as well as straight up. If you are also dealing with electrical, as we often are during a full room remodel, and don’t have your circuits in place these fans also have outlets on the sides for your phone charger / tunes (as you can see from the red cord attached to the fan on the right).
Here is the one gotcha: reconsider deploying dehumidifiers and fans if you have some seriously thick mud. In this case, you are running the risk of creating cracks. Save them for the next few layers when you are floating out the seams.
Know your limits.
How detail oriented are you? How artistic are you?
Taping and floating drywall is an art form. Do it well and no one will notice. Do it poorly and everyone will notice.
Know yourself well enough to know if you will do a good enough job to satisfy your expectations.
If you don’t feel confident, hiring it out is a perfectly good option too.
Celebrate when you are done!
The proof we are done is on our hands…new drywall primer sealing up the texture.
Any Shiner will do, but the new Lemon Pils is a good one!
Just in case you missed the links in this post and want to peruse the products we have found works best for us:
Steel or stainless knives…you decide.
Plastic/steel or stainless mud pan…you decide.
Drying enablers: dehumidifier, oscillating fans, and/or B-Aire Fans.
Honeywell half mask respirators. A replaceable particulate filter of P95 or greater (we use P100).
BlueDri HEPA or Phoenix HEPA air scrubber.
A Rigid wet dry vac compatible (like this one) with a HEPA adapter kit.
water
…and a healthy dose of patience!
What unusual drywall tips do you use every time you tape and float drywall? Please leave your hard earned beginner drywall taping tips in the comments below.
