Finishing a Drywall Joint STEP 1

hello this is Ryan Voorhees instructor with the construction technology department at Ivy Tech Community College and today I'm going to demonstrate the proper methods for taping and finishing a standard tapered drywall joint for an example we're going to use a standard tapered drywall joint I'm going to go through some of the tools that we'll use to complete this process the first tool that we plan on using is a 6-inch taping knife and this this knife is used to apply mud and remove that mud from the tape in the first step the second knife we're going to use is an 8 inch finishing knife all of these knives are very stiff and sharp to allow for a very clean edge and the final knife that we'll use is a 12 inch finishing knife again a very stiff strong sharp knife you'll notice I'm holding a drywall pan this is to hold my mud as I'm working through the process it has sharp edges for cleaning off my knife in addition as far as tools are concerned when we're done and we're ready to sand we will use either a sponge to wet sand or a drywall sanding pole with an open face paper to dry sand so I'm going to start off with step number one and step number one is to apply a five-inch wide layer of mud to the joint fairly thick about an eighth of an inch thick and then I'm going to apply standard paper drywall tape to that joint this paper tape is pre-creased so if I was doing an inside corner I could crease this by hand and apply it to the joint but we're doing a flat joint so I'm not going to crease this tape now with paper tape I have two options I can apply this tape directly to the compound or I can pre wet the tape in a bucket of water and smooth it out and apply it and I'm going for this demonstration I'm going to apply this tape wet so to start off I have my joint all the drywall is done and ready I have an empty pan and a 6-inch taping knife this is a stiff knife very sharp so I have pre-mixed drywall compound here you can also mix your own compound but I chose to use premix for simplicity I'm going to load my pan up with mud keeping a clean knife as I go as you can see I have about oh maybe a cup of nice compound here this compound is about the consistency of peanut butter which is about what I want for taping and I keep it all on one side of my pan so I have a clean side so I can always keep a clean knife so I'm going to leave my knife here and get my compound out of the way and for this step I'm just gonna dig in to my compound and I have a knife full of compound and I want to apply about five inches my knife is six inches so if I applied it straight on I would have to wide so I'm gonna choose to apply my mud more vertically across that joint so I can keep the mud right in the center of that joint and again I'm applying this mud fairly thick and then I'm gonna take and actually strike that mud off with a very little pressure I'm just trying to spread it out evenly across this view and then add the areas where you're not quite 5 inches I have a few low spots here and again as I work here I keep my knife clean you know let me cut off what I need if I allow mud to stay on the knife it will dry it will create issues later on so this is adequate for this particular joint here so at this point I'm ready to get my tape so I'm going to take my tape order it at one end of my joint you can estimate the length of that tape then just take my fingers and tear this tape like so now again I could apply this dry straight to the joint but I choose to apply it wet especially in a dry atmosphere it helps that tape to adhere to compound much better so I take that tape wet it and wring it out and it's ready to put on the wall so I'm going to Center this tape on the joint and give just a nice enough pressure to get it to stick I'm not gonna push it in there with my fingers this point I take a clean knife and I'm gonna hold one into this tape as if I was just to start I pull the tape off the wall so holding one end and always starting at the center by very firm pressure at about a 45 degree angle and embed that tape into the compound now that it's stuck I don't have to hold the other side so I'm going to start in the middle 45 degree angle and pull that knife across to embed the tape and take my excess back to the pan so the tape stuck I'm going to do this one more time from the center always we work from the center because if we started on one end we could create a bubble that gets stuck in the center so we want to start in the center and work away to eliminate opportunities for bubbles and there we have a properly embedded first layer of mud with tape and at this point we will let this mud and tape dry overnight and then at that point we'll be ready for the next step

Channel: Ivy Tech ivyVILOS

Views: 13,509,536

Rating: 3.4996717 out of 5

Keywords: Drywall, Finishing, Home Remodelling, Repair, Construction, Installation

Id: 2uFK8OGV2UM

Length: 6min 35sec (395 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 13 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/CJShort]

Tom Cruise's taller, younger brother?

[u/epic_pig]

Informative and relaxing. Thank you