How To TAPE and MUD Your DRYWALL | DIY GUIDE

hey guys it's paul with stuttgart welcome back to our channel joe and i are back here one of our main projects and on our last video at this project you saw us hang all the drywall and it came out phenomenal we are ready for the next step and that is taping and mudding and that seems to give people a lot of struggle sometimes so in this video we're going to pass on to you some of our tips and tricks that we've picked up along the way so that you can get a flawless finish too let's get started all right so let's come on down here to the floor and let's show you our materials and equipment and you don't need that much so check it out i have two different types of compound i have a setting type and i have a pre-mixed type we're going to show you what that's all about here in just a minute and i just used three knives gang you can see how well used they are a six inch one that's all stainless steel and an 8 and a 12. i've got a stainless steel pan here you can buy the plastic ones but just spend a few more dollars get the stainless steel you won't regret it we're using paper tape we're going to talk about the tape here in a minute and i've got a dispenser i like using that freeze up my hands i've got a utility knife and a screwdriver so let's head back to these two types of compound and talk about why we need both types on a remodel project especially if you hung the drywall yourselves you're going to have some gaps between sheets particularly between the old and the new maybe you're going to have some damaged areas some holes you got to fix and you're going to fix those with what's called a setting type of compound it's a powder in a bag and you mix it with water it's called a setting type because once you mix it with water it's going to start to set up you can't stop it it's like grout concrete thinset that type of product and it's great for repairing drywall because it cures extremely fast and it doesn't shrink very much if i tried to use an all-purpose or this type of pre-mix compound to make those repairs you got two problems it's going to take forever to dry and you're going to get a lot of shrinkage those two problems are gone when you use a setting type of compound now this number right here on the bag that tells you about how long you have to work with the product when you mix it according to the manufacturer's directions as a contrast that's five minute mud you gotta be on the go to get this stuff on the wall quick enough but we're using 45 minute because that's all they had at the store and it's going to be great for us because we're going to start here in the kitchen with our pre-fill that's what we call this step we're going to work our way to the back of the house and by the time we're done our pre-fill in the kitchen is going to be cured it's going to be hardened and we can start taping and mudding right away the same day and what we're going to use to tape and mud is our usg plus three now they had this at my home center and they also had the all-purpose mud in a box i chose this for a few reasons number one it is very light i can pick this up with one hand if that were a bucket full of paint i'd have to do this right and i like the lightweight stuff it makes a big difference when this is full of mud and at the end of the day my shoulders and my arms aren't so tired the other reason is it's pre-mixed whatever i mix on this stuff i gotta use it and i'm to waste a lot of it but on this i can save it and i'm not wasting material and the third reason is now i got free buckets basically right we got a lot of tile work to do in this house and now i got four buckets i can use to do all our towel work so let's mix up some setting type of compound and start pre-filling now all i do gang i pour the powder right in my pan and i mix it up with that knife i've got some water right here now if you've really botched your drywall job you may have to mix that up like a bag at a time to make all your repairs but check it out not too bad here i think right here is a good place to start now i may have to mix up two or three batches but it mixes very easily so let's bust open that bag mix up some setting type of compound start pre-filling yeah [Music] all right that's all i got to do to fill in that gap now when i say gap what i do anything bigger than an eighth of an inch i'm gonna pre-fill and when i mentioned before about repairs check this out that little damaged area well that's no good i'm just gonna peel it off like that and i'm just gonna pre-fill it with this and it's gonna be fine boom let's keep pre-filling so remember i said earlier about those gaps between the old sheets and the new sheets well here's a perfect example that's as tight as i could get this sheet and this one was pretty hard to get in here because i had to slide it behind the space frame on the cabinet behind there get it tight here but i knew i could pre-fill that so no problem get some on my blade and i can already tell this is set up a little bit that's really all i'm doing gang i'm just pre-filling these large holes like this so when i go back with my corner tape it's going to be perfect alright again the pre-filling is done in the rest of the house and it wasn't too bad i was able to do all of it with that very first pan i made now i made up the second pan a little thicker and let me show you what we're up against now if you remember right here there was a doorway here we had a header we removed all that and did all this put a beam here so we could open this up but check it out i got a pretty big gap right there and the reason for that is the way this house is framed this room behind me this dining room the are going this way so we got a little bit of a sag right here at mid span but i've got a brand new beam here and then these joists are going this way very typical in a remodel though just have the transitions between the old and the new again the old work the new work the old framing the new framing so we're gonna fix this by pre-filling i'm simply gonna take my six inch blade and we're gonna fill all that in let me get some on there for you you can see how thick it is and that's all i got to do so let's finish all this and see how it looks after we're done all righty gang that hot mud is now dry and so i'm going to grab my 12 inch taping knife and i want to show you something very often i use my taping knives to see how well i'm doing to see how well and flat the joints are so check it out now i've got about an eighth of an inch of a belly we we're really gaining on it but let me grab my four foot level and i want to put it against the original ceiling on this side and this side now check it out of course the level is straight it would represent a flat ceiling but i've got this belly here and i'm going to fill that with hot mud but i'm going to do it later and that's a process that i call floating out so by the time this patch is done i'm basically going to have joint compound all the way out to here and all the way out to here and it's going to be absolutely smooth but i can't fix it yet because the first thing i want to do is tape and mud all these joints so let's hop down on the ladder get our mud ready and show you some of our tips and tricks about how we tape and mud drywall all right guys our first tip on taping and mudding is you have to remix the mud even though this is put together in a factory and they put it in a bucket or a box you've got to mix it together and it even says on the bucket right here remix contents before use so what am i going to use well i have quite an arsenal of mixers and we have learned over the years which one is better than the others so this style right here we tend to use this for masonry products thinset mortar stuff like that this one we use for paint and grout i used to use this one for grout but this edge right here sometimes when you have it in a bucket and if that's an orange bucket or a blue bucket that edge will scrape the bucket and you'll get those bits in your grout don't ask me how i know that so this one which is more of an egg beater style it's just all smooth that's the one i use for drywall compound i've got it chucked into my big uh dewalt right angle drill i've got it set on 300 rpm it's a little overkill for this but it's the perfect tool in my opinion let's take the lid off and we're going to show you what this looks like before you mix it and what it looks like after you mix it and you're going to see what a big difference it makes all right let's take the lid off of this bucket and check it out now i've seen people just dip in and start using it but look at this gang does that look like it's ready to put on a wall so let's throw that back in the bucket and mix this compound and we're going to show you what a big difference it makes [Music] all right let's grab our knife and see how it looks what a difference that makes see that that is ready to go now our next tip for you i always have a clean bucket of water handy mainly for three reasons what i'm gonna do i'm gonna take this out of here i'm going to take it out of the drill and i'm just going to store this in the water and that way this won't dry on me i don't have to clean it right now because i'm going to need it later so there's no point wasting time i'm just going to store it in the water the water is also good you're going to get in here clean your knife clean your hands as you go and then if i need to thin this anyway i've got some water right here i can just scoop some out with my pan or whatever put it in the mix mix it up and i'm good to go i typically don't add any water when i'm taping the first coat but i will add it as i make progressive coats and we're going to talk about that later on but i think i'm ready to tape bud you ready to put some in the pan get our paper tape and get going let's do it all right that fast [Music] all right that's looking great feels good to finally start taping and mudding but before i finish the ceiling let's talk about a couple of things number one is my paper tape dispenser to me it's invaluable if this thing were loose it's gonna end up on the floor you're gonna get all kind of bits of trash in your tape it's going to end up in your mud and it's a mess now if you notice i've got the tape coming through right here that's so i can pull off a piece and cut it sometimes though i don't use that feature and let me show you why if i'm doing this long wall right here i just want to walk and let this the tape spool off by itself so if i pull it out of there it's going to come off very easily i can just walk and pull and it's going to come off but if it's feeding through here it doesn't spool off so easily so i kind of use it both ways and i used to wear it on my right leg but very recently like last year i figured out you know what it needs to be over here because i got too much stuff going on on my right side anyway so i put it on my left leg because i'm right-handed another question that comes up a lot is is there a sequence to taping does it matter if you do one seam in front of the other yes it does let's walk over here behind jordan and i'm gonna show you why so i'm gonna put this back through here and i'm gonna take off a couple pieces of tape one two now the goal is to have as few pieces of tape that end like that as possible you want the other piece of tape at the intersection to cover it now you can't always do that like over here at this outside corner on this patch obviously i have a piece of tape that's the tail is loose but as often as i can i try to capture that tail with a piece of tape or the corner bead so i'm going to do the the factory edges first where the taper is like that then i'm going to come across and capture that with the piece of tape over the butt joint the same goes true on an inside corner i'm going to do the the walls and the ceiling first and my inside corner tape is going to go like that just imagine if that were all the way up at the ceiling like that and over here where we have an outside corner i'm going to do all these then put the corner bead over it and it's going to capture that no big deal really but it makes for a cleaner job i think and talking about corner bead we're going to show you our trick on how to do that later so let's hop back up on the ladder get this ceiling done and then we start working on these walls all right guys the ceiling's all done super excited about that and while i was doing it there was a couple things i was doing i kind of do it like automatically right because i've been doing drywall a long time but i wanted to point them out to you i don't skim coat over the tape immediately i'm just embedding it with the knife and i'm moving on the reason is i got two reasons number one i got plenty of time to come back and put the skim coat over it but number two remember when i put this down like 10 minutes ago and now i'm coming back later putting this one this drywall compound is already drying in fact if you look behind jordan over there it's drying really fast we got the heat on in this house so that's great but i always want to work a wet edge if i take time to skim coat over the top of the tape this is going to dry even more and i'm going to ruin my my joint right here and i don't want to do that that's the same reason i'm not worried about the screws right now we're going to come back and do those later when we have the time if i were to take the time to do the screws while i'm right here again this is going to start to dry and when i come back and put this tape up i'm going to ruin it right here so let me head down off this ladder and i want to show you how i hold this knife now a lot of people would tend to put the knife right back in the pan when they're working on the tape i don't it's just habit for me i hook it right there i don't even need to look right check this out i'll close my eyes and i can hook it now when i get further in the process and i'm using a 6 and a 12 i hook them both and again it's just habit for me i do it subconsciously without even thinking about it and it keeps my knife handles and everything nice and clean but you know what we did that whole ceiling and we really haven't shown you our technique so why don't we head over to this wall right here we'll do this 12 foot long factory edge then we'll do a butt joint and we'll do an inside corner and an outside corner with corner bead let's jump in alright guys you got my pan full of mud don't put too much i don't want it too heavy i'm going to wear out my shoulder but let's head over to this wall and do the easiest one first and this this factory edge joint we got the tapered edge of each sheet of butting each other if you're a diyer you might be tempted to come over here and start taping like this that's going to take you forever it might work for you but it's going to take you a long time and when you're on a ceiling you got to move let's wipe that off and let me show you how i do it i'm going to get a good amount on my knife i'm going to clean off each corner like that i'm going to start with my knife like this and i'm going to work to my left i like working from my right to my left when i'm doing this part and watch what happens to the blade as i move i'm flattening it out so that all the material comes off i'll catch that with my knife then i'm going to come back with another motion boom i just did three or four feet ready for tape in two motions isn't that a lot more efficient so let's finish this wall real quick and then we're gonna put some tape on it well let's see if you can do it again how consistent are you all right let me see if i go a little longer let's just make sure you didn't get lucky with that one all right that was pretty good see let me show you something if you just do that and leave this mud here it's gonna come off right so i like to clean it like that it won't come off so bad starting at an angle and as i go i'm going to flatten out my blade that was a little more mud than i like but i still didn't drop any it's going to be a little messy and that's one of the reasons i didn't thin the mud right now because when it's thinner i'd have made a much bigger mess right because it's gonna fall off the knife a little more readily all right guys let's throw some tape up on the wall and does it matter which side of the tape goes into the mud it absolutely does this side right here is kind of fuzzy and the other side is smoother the fuzzy side goes into the tape so i'm just going to start right here line it up in the middle of the joint embed it i'm going to move down you see as i walk it's coming off the spool right there it's staying nice and clean i can embed it embed it cut it with my knife now i'll go get my pan and we'll clean that up now all i'm going to do i'm just going to come back clean off all the excess mud and that's it gang nice and fast and i think i think the mistake that most people make is try to put on too much mud then you end up sanding jordan i actually do very little sanding we're going to go into that a little bit more later but now that this one is done what do you say we do a uh butt joint let's do it all right that's what we just did well that's a factory edge oh so what do you mean by butt joint foot joint is where the two ends of the sheet come together there's one right under that window why don't we tackle it all right spoiler alert taping a butt joint is the same thing as taping a factory edge like that the difference comes later on in the taping process where you're going to feather this one out a whole lot more than you would a tapered joint and we're going to show you that but while we're right here let me do this one real quick and then i say let's go tackle some inside corners but i'm pretty close to this electrical box i'm not worried about it if the tape were to cover it like that i'm just going to tape it and i'll cut the tape off later when it dries just use my knife as a straight edge cut the tape i tear it and that's it that's all i need to do so now that we've shown you the ceiling and how to do a factory edge and a butt joint let's head to the back of the house and we're going to do an inside corner with paper tape all right guys in here in the master bathroom and uh check out these lights don't worry about it those are coming down we're not leaving them so come over here in this corner we're gonna do an inside corner for you and have a little different knife technique what i typically do i'll load up one half of the blade like that i'm going to come over here to this side and then apply it like that you'll notice i did the same technique a little bit of an angle here and as i apply the mud i'm flattening the blade so i have more product on the wall get some more on there on that side and just come on up now i want to do this side now i'm on the other side of the blade just like that one motion and i'm ready and you're doing it so fast i can barely catch it now let's grab the ladder hopefully i don't knock my head on that light get the top and we're ready for tape now this one i'm going to work down and put on that side of the blade there's my mud just like that over here i want it on the right side of the blade i'm always thinking about where i'm applying the mud and where i want it on the knife in relation to what i'm doing on the wall need a little bit more right here i'm trying not to dig into the other corner as much see what i did right there i'm gonna do it on purpose so you can see see i removed the mud i don't want to do that it's just something you got to practice with speaking about practicing if you're doing this for your first time find a closet you know do it behind cabinets something like that where you won't see it all right i'm all ready for mud and put this down grab my tape the paper tape comes pre-creased it creases easily in one direction and you're ready to go i'm going to embed it use my knife like this set it gently in the corner now come back to one side clean the blade do the other side and i'm done all right now we're at the bottom of this inside corner i'm using my left hand and i'll put my thumb where i want to cut the tape that's my cut mark i'm gonna bring it over here to this wall use my knife tear it off pre-crease it and embed it in the mud all right that's it inside corner pretty quick game now let's head back in the kitchen and we'll show you how to do an outside corner with corner bead alrighty gang i like to use paper-faced corner bead for a few reasons now it's called paper face obviously this is all paper very similar to the drywall tape paper but on the back there's your metal that's going to give your corner some strength now traditional corner bead the metal corner bead has to be applied with a mechanical fastener like a nail pneumatic staple gun or you could buy a clinching tool and clench it on like that the beauty of this is i just put mud on here and i can just put it on the wall i used to put the mud on the wall but then i realized it's much easier to put this on a table work on a table bring this to your corner and apply it and what i could actually do i could actually go through the whole project i think i got 12 pieces i could cut them all number it one here one here two two three three put them all on a table i could have jordan or somebody else at that table applying the mud on the inside here and all i have to do my job is to grab it it's pre-mudded and put it on the corner let's show you how easy it is [Applause] all right guys that's kind of it it's a little bit messy but that's the process now when i apply it to the wall it's going to squeeze out and make sure that this is all coated on the inside and when it dries it's going to be completely solid so do the messy part outside set up a table on some plastic or cardboard like we did and i'm just going to stand this up work it around this beam use my hands to push it in i'm going to wash up and then we're going to get the knife in the pan and clean it up can you see the mud coming out right here it's exactly what we want [Applause] all right check this out gang i'm going to use my knife to make sure that the corner bead is where it needs to be let's come down come on down here to the corner when i put it on here see this will actually move to the left and the right i can roll it basically but when i first put it up it was way over here to the right and see that i would have a hump here and never get it out so i'm just going to take the corner bead move it over to the left until the knife is touching the corner bead and i have a big valley not a big valley i have a little void right there that i'm going to fill with mud just about like that is what i want i'm going to come back around and check this corner but we're actually going to have a piece of paneling here and a piece of j mold there so i'm not worried about it but typically you go here and here and get that void the same so that this is perfectly centered on the corner of your wall so now what i want to do i'm actually going to fill that i'm going to get some mud i'm going to apply it over the paper and pull it off with my knife just like that look how nice that looks we're almost ready for paint all right i'm going to finish this corner and then i think we're going to get out of here dude cool all right all right guys before we get out of here let's talk about all these drywall screws we got to fill those right so i've seen a couple different techniques and we're going to show you ours now whenever i'm doing drywall screws i always carry a phillips screwdriver with me and why well we're going to have some ringers what's a ringer before i put any mud on the wall i'm gonna take my knife it's clean i'm gonna run over the screws that sounds good let's check this rope did you hear that right here hear the blade that screw is not set all the way so i'm just going to get my screwdriver running oh sorry but run it in a little bit now i'm good put my screwdriver away now let's talk about how we put all that mud on the wall we got hundreds maybe thousands of screws right now let's go back to when we put up this piece of tape remember we had some fun and we're saying you could put it up like this six inches at a time but it's going to take you forever it's the same thing with these screws i got four screws here and i got four screws there actually what five here so let me do these in a way that i see done a lot one two three four five six seven eight i took a little bit of time right i mean it got the job done now check out how i was taught you're gonna get some mud on your knife just like we did before a little bit like that and i'm gonna use the edge of the knife not like this sideways and i'm going to go up applying pressure as i go up now look at my blade all the mud is on the wall i started at that angle like we talked about before and as i moved up i flattened the blade against the wall and all the mud is gone seems like you use that technique a lot when you're doing muddy it is we use it here and on that inside corner it's the same technique so one two and you're done i still got some mud on the blade right one okay i missed that one i'll probably catch it on the downstroke i kind of did but i get it and i can just keep going how fast that is that's my technique on those screws i could probably do this whole wall in less than a minute it just takes practice you guys got this all right guys i'm all cleaned up we sure hope you enjoyed that video drywall is not the most exciting subject in the world but it sure is important on your project you want to make sure it's perfect as best you can get it and we sure hope you learned some tips and tricks from us if you're a pro drywaller out there let us know down below some of the things you do on your project to make it go faster and make it go better smash that like button for us subscribe if you haven't already and we'll see you on our next video [Music] all right guys we're going to clean up right now in order to preserve this mud i'm not just going to put the the lid on there that's not going to work it's going to dry and then it's going to get in your product and ruin your finish later got my clean knife i'm going to come around the edges and i'm going to clean the sides of the bucket just like that i'm just going to throw that in my water i've got my sponge and now i'm going to use the sponge to clean the side of the bucket we don't want any compound on the edges because like i said it will dry and then tomorrow when you come back it's going to mix in your mud and it's going to fight you all day long all right now that that's clean i'm going to take some of this water and i'm just going to pour it on top just to cover that way my mud won't dry out i'm going to put the lid on so no debris falls in there when i come back tomorrow i'm going to pour that water off remix it with my mixer we'll be good to go it'll keep like this for months in louisiana where we live in the summertime it will actually start to mildew it doesn't keep forever but it's a good trick to know on how to keep your mud clean and wet and ready to use the next day

Channel: Stud Pack

Views: 979,857

Keywords: studpack, stud pack, diy drywall, drywall tutorial, drywall for beginners, how to install drywall, how to tape drywall, how to mud drywall, drywall mud, drywall tips and tricks, drywall installation, drywall patching, drywall tools, tape and mud tools, how to cover drywall screws, drywall technique

Id: EhXz4rFByhM

Length: 28min 13sec (1693 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 23 2022