HOW TO SKIM COAT OVER TEXTURE LIKE A PRO!! DIY SMOOTH WALLS

hey everybody my name is mike montgomery and today i'm going to show you how to skim coat over wall texture for a super smooth finish on modern bills [Music] today we're going to be skim coating in my living room and dining room and as you can see my walls already have an orange peel texture with paint over them i started by removing the pine chair rail paneling that's going around my dining room it's ugly outdated and needed to go next i grabbed a paint tool and i scraped away any of the raised adhesive i also made sure to get any paint blobs or bumps that were on my wall you want to make sure there are no high points after i removed all of the trim around my baseboards and my door frames i masked off all of my electrical outlets that way i didn't cover them in joint compound i also masked off all of my accessories like my furnace my air conditioner and anything else that i couldn't take off the wall skim coating makes a huge mess especially for me since i'm not a pro so taking some time to mask everything off is definitely worth it for this first coat i used lightweight all-purpose joint compound and i watered it down just a little bit before mixing it up with a drill if you add too much water it'll be prone to shrink or crack as it dries you basically want it as thick as possible but still be able to spread with this inch and a quarter roller that we're going to be using to apply it let's do this i found that it's easiest for me to work in smaller sections and flatten it out as i go and a 12 or 14 inch drywall knife is a really common tool to smooth out this thin set you'll notice that i worked the joint compound into the corners before i smoothed out the face of the wall i want to build as thick of a coat as possible on this first pass so i'm using light pressure and making sure not to dig in with my trowel no i'm using really light pressure and i'm slowly taking my handle closer to the wall as i go down and i am not worried about any of these small imperfections we're going to stand back and do a second coat and there you go that's how you apply your first skim coat if you're using a standard drywall knife the wider you go the better and i was online the other day and i picked up a very cool tool that i am super excited to try out on this wall now i am very excited to try this out it is a 48 inch skimming blade this is gonna give you a really wide reference surface and i'm super excited to try it out i'll leave a link below so right away i was super hyped to try out this new tool a 48 inch wide blade means it's the same width as a standard sheet of drywall so if there is a dip or a raise in any panel then theoretically i could go stud to stud or edge to edge and flatten it out now i found that i was getting a little bit more negative space or voids when i used this than a drywall knife and that's because i built a thicker first coat that wide reference surface prevented me from digging in and removing as much material per pass check it out so as of now my first impressions are really great and we'll come back with a second coat to fill in all of those voids but while we're working i want to focus on the doorways so i'm going to go with a no trim look around my doors or at least that's what i'm attempting so i filled in any negative space around my door casing and then used drywall joint tape to make sure that didn't crack as it dried and with that our first skim coat is complete and now it's time to sand these walls and if you're doing a small room or just a single ball a drywall hand sander on a pole is a great option you just want to sand down the high points not worrying about any low spots because we're going to fill those in later but in today's video i'm going to be using the same drywall sander that i used on my ceiling it comes with its own dust collection pack but it only works so so and in today's video i've got it hooked up to my shop vac with a dust separator all of the dust just fall into this 5 gallon bucket and keep my filter and bag in my shop back clean whoa so let's give it a try and see how the dust collection works [Music] my first takeaway was that sanding these walls was way easier than sanding my ceilings smooth just like with the pole sander i don't want to sand it down to smooth i just want to make sure that if i have any ridges or high points they're taken down at first i used a really high grit sanding pad but then i switched out to 100 grit and that worked well for me this is probably where i should mention if you're interested in this or any of the tools and supplies that i've used for this project i'll make sure and leave links down in the description so you can find them the sander has a speed setting of one through five and i found that i got best results with it on three using a real touchy trigger then i came back with the pole sander and got everything that i couldn't with the round pad your second skim coat should go on just like the first but on this one you can use a little bit more pressure with your drywall knife the way i like to explain it is your first skim coat gets you to about 75 or 80 of the way to flat and the second one is supposed to get you all the way there i still had some negative spaces in this second coat but like before don't worry about them especially if you're using a wide skimming blade like this and really quick if you're not already make sure and click that subscribe button and the notification bell down below so you can keep up with all of the projects in this joshua tree cabin renovation in quick pro tip i found out that i had an easier time using a drywall hawk which is this platter i'm using instead of a standard mud pan it's really easy to load up that front edge with a drywall hawk and smooth out the corners before i worked with the big skimming blade to flatten out the face of the wall it's always important to keep your skimming blade clean and if you wet it before you smooth that does help and that concludes coat two we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor and really quick i'd like to give a big thanks to the sponsor of today's episode squarespace if you need a website an online store we're just a custom domain squarespace is your one-stop shop and the best part is you need zero website building experience squarespace's designer templates look great on desktop tablet and mobile no matter where customers find you and they are packed with tons of great features like no limits to the number of products that you can sell using a squarespace store the squarespace video studio mobile app that allows you to create high-level professional content for your website and social media and don't forget member areas where you can package premium content behind the paywall charging your members on my description that squarespace.com modernbuilds you can build out your entire squarespace site before entering any of your credit card info and then when it's time to make your website live don't forget to use my code modernbuilds for 10 off your first site store or domain now let's get back to the build and before my final sanding i'm going to come back through with some more joint compound and fill every void that i can find [Music] i don't want to build this up at all i want to squeegee it flat so this is where you can really let your ocd or attention to detail shine you want to make sure and find as many voids or negative spaces as you can find so that whenever you do this final sanding you don't have a lot of things to fix afterwards it's time for our final sanding and i'm swapping out this 100 grit sandpaper for this 240 grit sanding net this is supposed to really let air breathe and collect dust well and i want it to be super super fine grit so it's not aggressive let's get this done so by now i've used this amazon drywall sander to smooth out the skim coat on my walls and my ceiling and i've got good feedback for the price about 150 or 75 bucks it worked really well and it doesn't seem to be working any worse than when i got it in quick pro tip you can rent drywall sanders and dust collection from a home improvement store like the home depot it really does help if you're sanding your corners to cut away the sandpaper on the long edge of your pole sander it just keeps it from digging into the ceiling when you're sanding the walls and vice versa and these angled sanding sponges are the bomb they're great both on corners but especially window frames as my final final step i added a little bit of pigment to my joint compound that i had left over and i used it to find any void left over and sand that back and with that our drywall skim coat is complete now first let's check out these befores not only was there ugly paneling on the wall but it was an ugly paint color full of nail holes and now let's check out these afters so that's about all there is to it and i really appreciate you all watching i hope you learned something from this video and if you have any great tips make sure and leave those down in the comments below be sure to stay tuned i'm painting the house next and i've got a very fun episode planned bye everybody

Channel: Modern Builds

Views: 139,588

Keywords: modernbuilds, modern builds, diy, how to, do it yourself, skim coat, ceiling texture, popcorn ceilings, Joshua Tree, home improvement, smooth ceilings, scrape, remove ceiling texture, WALLS, WALL TEXTURE

Id: NuBK8RBnFu8

Length: 8min 51sec (531 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 05 2022