How to Finish Drywall For Beginners | Nestrs

[Music] [Music] the benefits of mixing the drywall compound essentially gonna get rid of the bubbles that's in the mud itself and also gonna it's gonna make it more workable so when you put it on the wall wipe it off scoop it in your pan she's gonna be a lot easier to to work with essentially and save you time in the end another way to make this process go a little bit smoother is to add a little bit of dish soap now for this I don't add any water and when you're doing a skim coat if you want a lighter creamier finish no bubbles whatsoever so you add a little bit of water to but for the tape coat you want it to be a little bit heavier because this is the stuff that's going in your seams and creating that bond between each sheet of drywall so no water at this point just a little bit dish soap I found that a metal pan is just easier to clean it easier to work with so I use a six inch knife to tape again there's no rules for this some people I've seen use 8 inch knives some people use 4 inch knives 6 inches just seems to be the right size that fits in your bucket to scoop the mud out really easily and it also gives you enough flexibility to move that tape where you need to go when you tape you want to do the whole length of a wall you don't want to have one piece of tape that starts in the middle and stops here you want to go the whole length of wall so that's what we're gonna do all right so what we're trying to accomplish is we want to put a layer of mud on the seam and we're gonna tape the seams first now you'll notice that these seams right here with the paper on the edges they're the factory seen that has a little indentation so just to show you you don't have to go out 12 as far so we're only gonna be 6 inches out 6 inches out when we're done finishing but for now we just need our 6 inch knife and we just need to apply the tape so what we're gonna do is we're gonna apply mud first because we got to put the tape on top of the mud so I just run my knife sideways right across the seam all the way down the line so now we're applying the tape now this roulette save costs about 2 dollars and 50 cents it's not that expensive it's just paper but it is going to hold your seams together and prevent cracking all right now they do also have a mesh option which I've used in the past a lot of times I like to use that in wet places like bathrooms but this will be fine for our application and it is as simple as putting the tape right over the mud you just put on the wall when we have this GFI box we're gonna stop our tape here and continue on the other side after you get the tape on the wall super simple step you're simply gonna wipe it out and you're gonna put a decent amount of pressure but not too much now the tape this is paper so sometimes it can crease and catch on the knife so you want this to be a nice smooth motion if that makes sense so we're just pressing the mud down in the seam that's behind the tape and making sure that that is getting filled and if I haven't mentioned taping is step one of the finishing process you're gonna first you're gonna do three layers you're gonna tape it and you're gonna coat it and then you're gonna skim it so same process here if you get mud all over yourself your true drywaller so don't feel bad about that although I think eighteen years ago when I started this my my journeyman and the people the guy who trained me says like you're if you get any mud if you drop any mud you're terrible drywaller should be perfectly clean I think he was just being a jerk because I've never not made a mess here take that out - that's terrible all right so again you're gonna just run your knife across the tape getting all that mud underneath out of there not too hard on the first pass because you don't want to crease the tape a second time nice and firm once you tape your primary run then you're gonna have to address the butt joints so I do that second so we're gonna look at these butt joints and it's the same thing we're gonna run your knife nice thin line for the tape all right so now we find ourselves at a corner that we need to tape now this is the same principle as a flat wall except there's one extra step instead of just putting the mud on the seam itself in the corner we have to go on both sides so I'm gonna do the same type of strategy with putting the knife sideways I'm gonna go all the way down on one side and all the way down on the other side now with the tape on we're gonna give it you'll actually notice a line in the center of your drywall tape and it just folds in half very easily and you're just going to give that a nice crease once you have the tape creased you're simply gonna just put it right in the corner with your fingers when you get to the bottom you're gonna take your knife and you're gonna put it into the corner and just pull it right out now if you see any mud on the floor just scoop it up with your knife and put it on the outside of your pan you don't want to put it back in your pan and get dirt in there because then you don't get a nice smooth finish you're just gonna take your knife and gently now corners are a little bit more fragile than flats so I wanna student I don't want to push too far into the corner because you don't want to rip your tape so I'm just gonna do nice and soft on both sides make sure that mud is getting underneath the tape see this is starting to pop up here you're gonna take a little mud from your pan and just put it right over that just make sure that that is all laying flat just like on a flat surface if you see a little crease I'm just gonna take your tape and you're gonna pull on it push it down to the ground get those creases right out and then lightly so now that we have our flats our butt joints and our corners taped out we have one final step in the taping process and that's the first cover for the screws so the best way to do this is you want to do a thin as small as possible because every layer you go a little bit bigger and the reason you go bigger on the next layer is to hide the seam what that does is that prevents a lot of additional sanding so you want to make the sanding process as easy and as simple as possible less mess less time today we are putting a second coat which is going to be the second step of the drywall portion so we're using a different type of mud for this one I use lightweight mud for my coating and my skimming coats it just it's easier to work with and it goes on a little bit faster when you're putting that much mud on a 10 or 12 inch knife you want to move quickly and if you have the multi-purpose stuff it's heavier and will slow you down a bit so lightweight stuff works great I do use the multi-purpose stuff on the first coat of the taping which I said previously but nonetheless we're using lightweight mud today and this time we're going to add not only the dish soap we're in a little water when we mix it so let's put some dish soap in here and I put some water in my pan just gonna put a little bit in it first [Applause] [Applause] so I want the mud there you go I want the mud to fall off a little bit just because I know that that it's gonna be super easy to work with now if it pulls off too much faster than that it might run on the wall which is something that you don't want so I'm not gonna add any more water I think we're good to go just as a reminder I did let the mud dry overnight so it depends really where you're at and what the humidity is but I'm looking in the corners and a couple of my corners still are a little bit wet but pretty much everything else is dry so I can continue with the coat usually I let it go overnight sometimes it might take a little bit longer but use your judgment I'm gonna use my 10 inch knife you can use the 8 inch knife but it's it's gonna basically what you want to do is you want to cover more than you previously did on the last layer so I use a six inch knife on the last one now I'm using a 10 inch knife on the skim coat I'm going to use my 12 inch knife and we're gonna do the butt joints and the flats together so first I'm just going to apply the mud now over your flats it's just gonna be centered with your tendon tonight your butt joints are a little bit different because they don't have the valley where the tape lays this is these pop out a little bit more so you're creating kind of a hump so to speak so you gotta go out ten inches on each side to create a nice smooth finish you could do the wall in sections whatever you're comfortable with the first step to making a nice smooth surface as you got to cut your edge so what I do is I put pressure with my index finger on the side that I'm cutting and by cutting I just mean we basically want to take this down so that there's no lip so basically this is gonna make your sanding process a lot easier so I go to the very end and I just all the way along the top now I add a stop from time to time because you're gonna get too much mud on your knife just cut it all the way down and this is a quick process once you get comfortable with it now you slide your finger over to the other side when you're cutting the lower edge and once you get to the butt joint you just follow that curve get it and then you're just going to go right down the middle so you get into your corner so there's a nice finished I'm gonna go all the way through now you put a little bit of pressure on this since this is a wider one you're gonna have to do a couple additional passes two on each side and one down the middle now you're gonna notice that there's some lips here from your from not being able to cover the entire width of your line those stand out and those scrape out now we're still doing a skim coat tomorrow after this so before I do it I'll just scrape those lips off if I need to use a little sand but you typically I don't and then just skim coat it now if you see some lips on the edge like that you want to avoid that so I'm just can take my knife and clean that up a bit and then we just keep moving all right so today we do the skim coat which is the final coat in your drywall process if you look closely you're gonna see some lips here right which were created where they going multi-directional with your knife now before we put the final coat on we're just gonna take your 12 inch knife and by the way your 12 inch knife is gonna spin a little bit past the stuff that you've already done because you want to cover any lips or any uneven surfaces that you've previously done in a previously in a previous coat but also you notice that there's some chunks that are right here that essentially when I was doing the corners up top or maybe even just covering these nails its trapped on the wall I didn't try to scrape him off because it was still drying I wait till everything dries then I come back and I scrape it right off now it doesn't have to be perfect you just want it to be smooth enough to get that final coat on and that final coat you know so start in the corner alright so the skim coat is a last and final coat as I explained before this is also your thinnest coat so all you're trying to do is simply cover you'll notice a little air bubble here that happens every once in a while you're just covering this and wiping it off so you're not trying to build it up you don't need to put too much pressure on one side or the other unless you're cutting that edge but really you're not wanna you don't want to have too much mud on this last coat so it's just a wipe on wipe off sort of situation so after you finish getting your flats and your buckets get any tape get any small repairs like around this outlet and then you get to do one final coat done the final step before you prime and paint is sanding your drywall so you want to make sure that you have a sander now these are 220 grit pads they come in packages that you can buy in bulk the way they are attached to this is they simply just screw right off these clips pop out and then you just tighten them down super simple all right we also have a sanding block for our corners and any trouble spots that we have on the walls also 220 grit so Sarah is gonna sand this for us now we're gonna start at the top of the wall and the reason I like to start top and work my way down is because it just from the way I organize my thoughts it's easier for me to work that way now when you start here you're not going to go into the corner so you want to have half of your pad on the green part and half of it on the drywall you want to stay away from the corner because if you hit that corner you're gonna have to remod and it's going to more drying and yep I'm nice in that yep you don't need to put too much pressure just make sure it's oriented long ways this way the the sander will roll on you if it rolls it could put some gouges in the wall so just make sure wherever you're moving forward with the sander you're going on the section you're going long ways and then when you change your orientation you do the same thing when you're going up and down you stay in this way so that's great for the butt joints you're gonna go in both directions you're gonna go vertical and horizontal now if you're having trouble with the sand pool you can always grab grab your sand block and just you know do it by hand although this is gonna take you a lot longer you should reserve this for your corners and for problem areas like this around like outlet boxes you just want to give this a nice hand because you'll probably roll the sand pull right if you go over this so just kind of play it by ear use your head now you can get you can get the angled sand block or you can get a square sand block I like the angled sand block because it's a little more versatile some people find the square sand box easier to do your 90-degree corners use personal preference yeah that's it let's try it one more time there we go okay if you're interested in any the products we use this video you can 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Channel: Nestrs, LLC

Views: 336,352

Rating: 4.859684 out of 5

Keywords: Nestrs, Lowes, Lowes home improvement, drywall, drywall ceiling, drywall finishing techniques, drywall taping and mudding, drywall tape, drywall skim coat, drywall tips and tricks, drywall for beginners, drywall mudding tools, drywall pole sander, garage, garage makeovers, diy drywall, how to finish drywall, how to finish drywall seams, how to finish drywall corners, drywall compound, diy home improvement projects, how to drywall, how to drywall a garage, drywall taping knife

Id: Mup3RHnYggA

Length: 18min 1sec (1081 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 25 2018