How To Tape & Finish Inside Drywall Corners

hi I'm Shannon from house improvements calm and in this video I'm going to show you specifically how to tape and finish an inside drywall corner we have a whole playlist of drywall related videos everything from mixing mud to hanging drywall to using a drywall lift you know and mudding and taping sort of thing we're just going to specifically break out how to do an inside corner so I've already gone ahead and prefilled the corner so what all that means is there was a slight gap here where the two dry wall pieces met and it was larger than about an eighth of an inch so I filled it with some mud just so it makes mudding the corner easier or applying the tape easier so that's what you kind of see here is just the residue of of me having done that already and you generally would run around and do that to all your any gaps that are larger before you started any of your taping your mudding so that's good and it's dry you're gonna have to wait till that dries before you apply your tape or you're just gonna have a mess so so that's dry already I'm gonna take always before I start I go around just with a knife like a four inch or five or six inch 3 inch whatever you got and just kind of knock off any little bits that might be sticking out or little edges from a trowel or whatever before you start just because otherwise if you don't do that you're gonna end up with that in the new surface that you're trying to finish so I just kind of run around knock off any little lumps and lumps and bumps that we have so we've got that we've got our all-purpose mud now this has been thinned down and mixed for all our general mudding but I'm gonna have to thin it down even a little bit more to do the taping part and for this little corner I'm just going to do it right here my trowel add a bit of water till I get the right consistency which is you know a little bit runny er than a pancake type mix sort of thing if you don't get it good and wet like that you end up with some dry tapes and that just ends up being a lot more work for your next coat so so I'm gonna thin it down so you're gonna need some some mud and the reason for this if you're just do in a small room like we're doing the reason I'm mixing my taping mud just in my pan as I need it so I don't mix a whole pail if I'm using the same mud rake through the whole job I don't have a whole pail mix to that consistency because it's too runny to use for actual coating so so I'll just mix what I need here I've really I've already done the whole rest of the room just left this off here for the video so so I've got a little bit of mud in here I'm going to just got some clean water cold water I'm just gonna have a little bit in here just mix it up it's getting pretty good so yeah probably even a little thick yep that's a little better so you want it to be able to you know kind of jiggle around in the pan like that pretty loosely okay so we've got our mud ready I've got my three-inch knife and I'm using paper tape this is what I'd recommend you to use I wouldn't use mass or anything like that you got your paper tape you'll notice it has a slight crease or a mark in the middle and that's your fold mark so simply just pull off the amount of tape you need you can take this corner eight top to bottom or you can do it in pieces like I'm doing it's not really that huge of a deal so just fold it along that crease it's already there well I got a little bit of old dry mud rear okay so it just basically gets some shape to it so that when you go to put it in the corner it's already kind of got its shape now I can see here's the end of the other tape I had I want to overlap it by an inch or so so this actual length is going to be all right I'll just set that to the side now I want to apply some mud into the corner on both sides there to set this tape in too so I'm just gonna load up a little bit on my knife come up to the wall and just run it down the wall I mean there's all kinds of different ways you can actually apply this on there this is how I do it I just make sure I've got a generous amount on there at least some in each eighth of an inch thick all the way along and Wraiths right into the corner get right up to where your overlaps gonna be there reach down to the floor in this case okay so you can see I'm quite generous with that if you want once you got it on there you can kind of just smooth it out a little bit oops I think I've already got it on me just kind of knock off the ridges not a huge deal if you'll do that or not just have a look there looks like I rubbed a little bit off reading this one area right here let's make sure I load that corner up again take my pre folded corner most times I mean if you're a half inch to an inch off the floor it's not a huge deal here baseboard is good generally cover that I just use my finger to kind of guide it back into the corner and then you can just lightly run your knife along that corner just to make sure you've basically got it straight don't push too hard that's just light because if you push it too hard you're just going to slice t48 open okay so once I've got it basically sitting where I want it I'm gonna take the same knife I'm just applying a moderate amount of pressure I'm just kind of losing out some of the mud that's back there smoothing it out catch this little edge that's out there make sure where the two overlap closes up and lean meats nice and tight and same thing down the bottom so I got my knife on about a you know a 45 degree angle from the wall applying a little bit of pressure okay stroke all the way along clean up that little bit out there and you want to try to leave it nice and clean like that okay so when it's nice and clean you're gonna be able to come back and do your next coats without a bunch of crud in there and not a lot to knock off or anything so you can see it's nice and smooth not a bunch of wrinkles and it's ready to dry okay so that's applying the tape now your next step is to actually apply mud over top of that tape to get your corner started or finished if you want you can do one side I always do one side at a time in one of my other videos I show using a trowel that's made to do both sides at a time I'm not a big fan of it that's what we showed using on that video on this one I'm gonna do one side at a time okay so you can recoat this right away with your first coat of mud you're gonna use mud mixed to the consistency of pancake batter and we show that in another video that we have on the playlist that I mentioned so this mud here is just a little bit thin for that I'm gonna add some out of the bucket here to it and this should be able to thicken it up a little bit just by doing that just adding a little bit there I'm just mixing together and it'll be good enough for what we're doing here today I didn't have a lot of the tamping mud left in there if you're using actual taping mud because there are types that are for just taping you don't want to use that for your other coats after the tapings done it's a lot harder to sand it doesn't go on as nice so but if you're just using an all-purpose for all your coats you can just simply do you know what I didn't add it to the pan already working with okay so I've mixed it up you can see this is you know just a little bit thicker it will roll off the trot off the knife but it takes a little bit for it to start moving so I'll just do the this would be first coat on one side I'm just gonna go up higher to start at the top this wouldn't matter if it's a corner wall corner or the ceiling corner okay so I just take and I get a little bit of mud on my trowel like that and I get up kind of put it into the corner and then stroke it away a little bit just kind of place my mud where I want it okay so what I'm doing is I'm leaving it quite generously thick here what a good eighth of an inch and it's tapering out just a little bit here and we're gonna stroke that off anyway but I want to make sure that I've got good coverage on my on my tape I'm a little thin up there okay some guys will just take their mod on there like this and just run it down like that I like to get my corner I only do my corners once on each side so I like to get the mud rubbed out just a little further that's why I go this direction when I apply it you kind of put it on you're trying to make sure you don't get too many air bubbles in there too so put on whatever you want if you want to go right down to the floor whatever a lot of times i just do what i can reach comfortable that felt climbing up and down a million times so i've got it on there i've got it out not quite as wide as my the trowel that i'm using this one i believe this is a five inch then i just come up here and I'm gonna hold my trowel so when I go up on the corner I'm holding this in this case I'm holding this side tight and I'm leaving a space on this side so I'm kind of putting extra pressure on in my case the right side of my knife so that I'm leaving access here and feathering it out to nothing on the other edge and this takes a little bit of getting used to kind of weird way I'm trying to be out of the way so you guys can see so it's more difficult for me okay so once I've got it relatively smooth you can see I've got a little bit of an edge here that isn't feathered out to nothing so I'm gonna do that same pressure on my knife and I'm gonna run down this edge just to knock that edge off and then I'll go over the whole thing again with the pressure angled just to kind of smooth it out and not feathering out that edge will just make it easier for you when you're sanding if that edge is already tapering down to nothing it's gonna make it a lot simpler so you can see in here I've got good coverage I'm not seeing the tape showing up anywhere and that's what I wanted if you got some ripples or bumps on the tape it's probably gonna show up and you you're probably gonna have to do two coats once the first one dries I'll have to do another one too in order to get it to cover so now I went down as far as I can reach now I'm gonna work up the wall until I meet this the same spot so same thing just putting it on there there muds just about perfect consistency right now I'm making sure I'm squeezing it right into that corner and I'm being pretty liberal get those on there okay so I've got it on there I'm gonna give her a pass just to kind of knock off the excess again I'm holding the knife approximately at a boat you know thirty to forty-five degree angle trying to keep that knife angle consistent as I move up the wall so that it leaves behind the consistent layer knocking off this little edge here okay now I'm going to make one more stroke and you notice I came down on the other one and now to come back up into that I'm coming the opposite direction I'm not trying to start where I left off the first time okay get a nice little nice little thing now I just about always end up with a little bit of a weeble wobble there I think you can probably see that on the camera maybe are you here that's just where my I lifted my knife and it leaves it just a little bit of a ridge there maybe you can't see it it's just a slight little Ridge and that will sand out fine but again as you look down there up and down you can't see the tape showing it's nice and flat there's gonna be very little sanding there because there's no you know there's no Ridge out here or anything so that would be my first coat on one side okay now I'd walk away from that corner don't even try to come in here and do the other side you're just gonna mess the other one up okay so leave that overnight come back and do your second side which we're gonna show up here on a corner that I did the other day okay so up here in the corner this is a typical situation where you've got your walls meeting the ceiling and they're all good all these inside corners need to be drywalled or I need to be minded I mean so I did these the other day I did one side of all these corners and this is how I would do it to speed it up is do it this way so that I'm not messing up the other edge as I'm doing the one the other one so you can see I didn't get right into the it right into the corners but those are all gonna correct once I do my other side so so this kind of gives me a 3-way corner to start with the next day they've all dried just come around with my knife again knock off any little edges sometime you get this edge on the side that you didn't mud and just kind of chip that off so it doesn't end up in your mud when you're and I'm just staying away from this right now just because I I did that earlier today and I don't want to mess it up so I'll show you how to do the second side now and the reason you can do both sides on the same day because that this side isn't totally dry when you bring your knife down because the corner here down here is gonna rub against that wall it's gonna peel it so the mud you see they're gonna peel them out of there because it's too wet or even if it's only slightly dry it's gonna it might roll or crack some big cracks out of it so so you're best off to leave that a day or if you need to leave it two days if you come back the next day and you're starting to mess with this because maybe this was thick or it's on an outside corner where the walls colder and it's not drying walk away from it and just leave it alone or you're just making more work for yourself these ones should be good and dry I'm using the same mud I used on my first side coat that I did just a second ago and really it's the same basic principle pushing it into the corner and just kind of bringing it out about four to five inches just basically getting getting a layer applied to the wall okay I've got it on there I'm just gonna shorten those up a bit because I had them a little wide for the trowel that I'm using the knife I'm using same idea now I'm putting pressure on the left side of my knife so that I'm leaving more mud on the right side just draw the knife breakdown get that little edge just like that now if you start seeing some little pinholes or little pockets show up there within the first few seconds then I'll just give it another stroke with the knife and it'll just knock those off nicely if you get a little bit of mud like this on the other corner if you're real careful you can pull it away if you're not careful you're just making a mess so just leave it till the next day okay so we got that one there now it's really difficult on mice to do my second corner to do all three of these at the same time because trying to get right in against there if you're real careful about it though you can do it so we get our mud in there cuz I've got a little gap for my first coat right get them out up there I'm just doing little areas here and usually I would do this hole three or four feet at a time but okay just get it on there now when I go into this corner I just want my knife nice and clean and I don't want to touch that corner I just did if I can avoid it push it in there I'm getting a little bump in there but that's alright don't get that when I Sam stroke this corner off there so I got that corner and I do the same thing with this one you just have to be real careful because you're up against this this wet part here now because we did this this is real thin there isn't a lot of thickness to that mud so it's not so bad so it can be done it just takes a little bit of practice so get your mud in there it's always harder working on the ceiling because gravity wants to take over okay so just get that in there it's gonna be a little awkward we'll do it here for the camera get into my corner over to my other corner tapered feather dope a little bit here I can fix up later looks like I had a screw hole here it's sunk a little bit when I did that one so I'll have to come back and work on that corner a little bit anyways and I probably will have to do a little bit rate in that very corner just because I tried to do all three edges again on the second coat but it definitely can be done so so now like I said this is all I would do now I would come back and fix that in that but if this all worked out perfect this would be ready for sanding up in this area okay cuz that's all I do I do one one width of this trial each way of the corner and as long as it ends up nice and smooth like it did here if you're good to go a little bit of sanding and it's all done okay so one of the biggest keys with mudding and I've mentioned this on lots of my videos is just making sure you go along and kind of chip off anything that's dry any little chips or little hangers that are hanging in there because if you don't they get in that new mud and you just have lines and streaks and everything everywhere so work as clean as you can you won't have any troubles so hopefully you enjoyed this video and it was informative for you and if you like our channel here please give us click the thumbs up and give us some notice that you like what we're doing and you can also leave a comment below you could go to the forum if you have any questions about this kind of project or anything really that is DIY related in in your home just go to the forum and post your question up and we will be sure to help you from there if you want to do a little bit extra you can check out a patreon page and maybe support us a little bit financially to keep making these awesome videos but for now thanks for watching we'll see you in the next one

Channel: HouseImprovements

Views: 166,202

Rating: 4.9172153 out of 5

Keywords: drywall, DIY, house, improvements, taping, mudding, inside, corner, finish, how, to, plaster, coating, paper, crack, fill, bead, metal, mud, compound, tape, coats, coat, bathroom, home, do it yourself, easy, pro results, professional

Id: nwTKWZk6e50

Length: 21min 18sec (1278 seconds)

Published: Sat May 25 2019