The Truth About Drywall Mud

well hello guys it's jeff from home renovation again today today i've got a kind of a neat treat for you we're doing a video here today all about the different drywall compounds slash muds that are on the market and the reason we're doing it is because there's a ton of choices and yeah there's more choices than i even have assembled here but i'm trying to drive home the point that when you go to the store you don't just buy whatever you don't want to read all the labels you want to take some advice from a pro who knows what's the best mud for you to use okay so let's go through all the options and then we'll discuss the pitfalls that are in the store all these muds that are here are made from the same company okay they're all made from the same company and they all have different design functions they all have a different purpose so it's not like you're going to the store and you're looking at the grocery store listener and and you're looking at a soup there's not four or five different soup companies all trying to market the fact that they have the best chicken noodle soup on the market all right that's not how this is working this is one company suggesting this solution or this solution and it's up to you to understand what you need because you know i'm going to guarantee you when you go to the store the people that are working there are not going to know how to help you up okay so we're going to start off with the one that's at eye level this is my favorite mud to hate okay and i want to tell you why this is what they call drywall compound it's not lightweight it's not all-purpose it's just drywall compound and this compound here is designed to how do we say it finish almost bulletproof it is almost impossible to say it okay now every one of these muds has different capacity to be sanded some are great and some are horrible this is the second worst when it comes to sanding okay it isn't even a quick set mud it takes overnight to dry but if you use this and you put too much mud on your application even if it's just a tiny patch you're gonna sand like for an hour to smooth it all out it'll drive you crazy you'll throw the pail across the road screaming and kicking this stuff will drive you in saying don't buy it i don't know why it's made except that they probably have a really high profit margin because they sell it in smaller pails as well and if you're a homeowner looking to do a small patch you might buy into the idea that the small pail is the one that's made for you because well it's just a small project but the truth is they come in three different size pails massive that's the medium and then a really small one so don't buy into the trap and buy a 15 a crap that you're gonna just go crazy over that's a really bad experience if it's your first experience if you want to patch a hole in the wall we'll show you another option coming up soon all right it's a lower cost and it's easy to send next they've got this lovely purple product and every time i see purple i'm reminded about you know uh our environmental change and and people are trying to market products for people who like to be conscientious about the environment and this is designed to be conscientious about your working environment it's designed to be what they're considering dust free it's a marketing ploy you are not going to get a dust refinish with that no matter what you do you still left the sand there's aspects of that compound that are still going to go airborne probably about half of what you sand is going to go airborne so whether you are cleaning every surface in your house a little bit or cleaning every surface in your house a lot you still have to clean every surface in your house this is not a solution to a problem all right what it does do is it actually creates a problem a proper drywall job when it's all finished you're sanding it just to change the texture of the drywall okay with the sanding paper so that it comes very smooth just like the paper on the drywall that doesn't have compound on it so that when you paint you get one continuous texture this stuff has its own texture it doesn't sand smooth so then when you prime it you also have to go back and do another application of another type of mud that is not the one in the purple lid in order to fill up all the little pinholes and puck marks that are showing up in the paint that are driving you crazy because the additives in this compound cause things to chunk out and flake out when you're sanding and that's what drags it all to the ground it does not do a really good job now if you're looking for a quick fix and you're you're trying to minimize dust and you just have one little hole to do maybe this will work for you but again that's a lot of mud for a small little fix in a maybe situation so again i'm going to suggest never to buy this product and just as a side note if your contractor is going to say oh we're going to do all kinds of dust dustless measures and they go to bring that mud out you just tell them to put it away because you don't want to have a crappy job in your house thank you very much don't you love getting information from someone who's not paid to tell you what to think okay the next information is going to be all the different powders that are out there now we're going to break this down there are two kinds of drywall tapes that we used primarily one is fiberglass okay and one is paper generally speaking paper tape is for all of the all-purpose pre-mixed drywall lightweight compounds that are on the market like the box down here and there are all kinds of advanced machines that commercial drywall tapers use guys are doing new houses all day long they're they're paid for speed and they spend good money on really high-tech equipment as a homeowner you're not but it's still my favorite mud because it's the smoothest and it sands the easiest now they make different kinds of mud in these boxes but the key is to look at the labeling and it has to say lightweight all-purpose drywall compound all those words have to be together in order for you to be comfortable you're getting a good product now depending where you're watching this video they might sell in a box they might sell it in a pail right so don't be freaked out about that what you're looking for is all-purpose drywall compound there are lots of companies selling it so you can go to a lot of different stores and see a lot of different brands recognized but it's all basically the same thing okay all-purpose lightweight drywall compound and you are gonna be good to go it works with the paper tape and you can actually do your entire project with just that one compound so if you're doing a basement you don't need to buy a lot of technology you can just go with one kind of compound and keep your life simple all right because there's a lot of other tools equipment and messing up muck and mixing your own mud and everything else that if you're not moving fast enough that your mud has to dry so that you're not standing around waiting for it to dry then you don't need all this other technology but if it's a small project and you're trying to get it all done in one day now we move into the next realm of mix your own compounds and fiberglass mesh tape the reason we have to use fiberglass mesh tape is because these additives that are in these different products here it causes the tape to lift off the wall now this has an adhesive property so actually you put this on the drywall before the mud when the bedding process for paper tape is totally different and if you're interested in seeing how to do that kind of process you're going to have to give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel right now because we got a video coming out real soon going to go through all the diy first steps and how to do drywall and understanding your tools and the application it's going to help you out a lot but for today we're just going to talk the product selection okay use fiberglass tape you can apply it on the wall and then you cover it with one of these other powder compounds let's start off with the what the numbers mean now we have different products here we've got a sheetrock 20 we've got a sheetrock 45 which is my favorite i use it all the time which is why it's open but on the project i'm working on i'm moving pretty quick and so i like to use a compound like this on my corner beads and areas like that so that it can set up real quick get hard and then i can get a finish coat on it right away almost every other application i'm just using the regular mud but if you want to move faster you can move sheetrock 20. and what the 20 refers to is the length of time that you can work with that material and it's on average don't take it for granted 20 minutes is what that means so you're going to mix that mud you're going to put it on your hawk or in your bucket and for 20 minutes it's going to be something that you can still tool and you can apply it and work with it after that it starts to get hard really quick and you're in a lot of trouble so you have to be careful how much you mix at a time right because you'll end up throwing in the garbage it has no other use so you have a 20 minute you have a 45 you have a 90 minute okay now for most people especially diyers i'm going to recommend the 90 minute mud is a perfect time for you because it will allow you to do a second coat later on in the afternoon on your outside corners maybe if you had damaged walls you had to fill up but if you use the sheetrock 90 to fill all your outside corners in big fill areas by the end of the day you know the last hour you can go all your outside corners you can apply your regular compound over top of that even if it's not dry it's safe to use as long as it's got hard okay and that's the secret the other compound out there is the 45 and it's my favorite because i work really quick so don't worry about it i just my personal favorite now there's another 90 product out here i want you to be aware of let's take a look at this and it's made by the same company again and this one's called durabond 90. now it's not the same product as sheetrock 90. you've got to know what you're talking about here you can't just go to the store and say yeah that jeff guy said i should buy the 90 minute mud and i'm going to buy this okay because this one over here in the white bag it sands really easily all right it's a nice lightweight compound with a hardener so it sets up fast but it sands really easily this one here all right it's uh it's kind of like bondo for your car okay when it's hard it's hard to steal you aren't sanding that even with a belt sander i'm telling you right now this stuff is crazy i don't really know why they actually made it i've never really come into a situation in the world of drywall where i needed something to set up and get that hard that fast it still has a 90 minute work time but the next day you can come back you can't shoot a bullet through this thing i'm telling you it's unbelievable no no that's not my recommendation for people living in certain neighborhoods to apply this mud to your outside your walls to protection the point is as a homeowner trying to work on your house if you use this product you're in deep trouble remember we did a video not too long ago i'm talking about grout and that there are two kinds of grout being sold in a lot of the box stores one was a regular unsanded route and the other one had an additive so that it would have a sealer right but the additive did more than just seal the grout lines it made it incredibly quick to work with you had to be super fast to apply it and wash it off and polish all your edges in or you had a mess to deal with the same way i warned you about that i'm warning you about this okay don't buy the durabond product because it i just can't even for the life of me understand why a homeowner would ever need it maybe in some commercial applications you could maybe justify using it but for the most part it's just not necessary all the technology you need for quick trying is in the other three products and they're all sandable so just steer clear that all together now we also wanted to take a look at my technique for using all-purpose mud because if it comes in a box or comes in a pail they have one thing in common they're still not ready to be applied to the wall okay i know it's pre-mixed but it's pre-mixed to a certain degree and it still needs a couple of things done to it before you can use it or you're gonna have a disastrous result your tape is all gonna bubble you're going to put on way too much mud and you're going to spend way too much sanding all right so let's just go we'll grab the stuff we'll come back and we'll explain how to mix big box mud like this how to store it because let's face it on smaller projects you might be working out of one pail of mud for a whole week right and you've got to know how to preserve the mud so that it doesn't go dry and crusty and wreck your mud so let's get into this now just one more quick note i want to make sure you get this clear the all-purpose they call it all-purpose boy they're so lying the the compound that's in these pails even though it's blue and this is blue they're not color-coded they're not related all right this is a different mix it's a different mix than the compound that's in the box there's a serious attempt here with the marketing i think drives people crazy because the smallest pail that's available on the shelf is in this product that's almost impossible to sand and i think a lot of people have got bad experiences because they bought a small pail for a small project and then had that nightmare experience trying to sand it if you want to do a small little repair might i suggest you use this product small little bucket small little repair this stuff is the stuff you've seen before maybe on advertisements or in other shows or maybe even on our channel it goes on pink all right and then it dries white when it goes white it's ready for sanding they come in a different size bucket as well okay so if you're just doing a little repair or a touch-up get this stuff so you can sand it don't get this stuff this is the wrong product for the job consider that it's also a different company imagine that i wish the mud that they put in this pail for the small pail was this mud here because at least then you'd be getting a product that you could sand and not be frustrated with i'm not sure why they're doing it but they are so you need to be aware the one other thing i should cover before i move on and show you how to mix mud and store it is the products that come in powder form that you have to add your own water to you can't mix that in a pail and then store it because it has a hardener in it it continues to get harder and cured you will never be able to recycle that you can't put it in a pail and it starts to get hard just add a little water and we'll freshen it up it doesn't work it once it starts to go hard you're done all right get it out of your pail as fast as you can or just at least push it to one side of the pail and lay it on its side overnight and then next day you can roll it it'll just pop right off for the pail because this stuff doesn't really bond to plastic very well okay that's your secret one more quick note when you're at the store if you're your local home depot and you're buying pails to mix mud okay because this stuff needs to be mixed if you're buying in a box it needs to be mixed if you buy it in a pail you can just add water and mix it in the same pail but for whatever reason canadians we love to have mud in a box i don't really get it don't buy the orange pails from home depot to mix your mud in it is a really soft plastic and i can remember might have been 10 or 12 years ago i tried mixing in in that pail and i was working away and i started to see these little orange flakes in the mud and i couldn't figure it out for the life of me for about 20 minutes and then i realized that my mixing blade had a little bit of a scratch because it wasn't brand new anymore and every time it touched the pail it was peeling off a little bit of the inside of the pail all right so what you want to do is you want to use a heartier version now this mud came in a pail when i bought it and i've been mixing in this pail ever since and i'm about seven or eight boxes in and it's still working great and i haven't had a single chunk come out of it yet something about the colored pails that are just so soft the same problem with the lowe's pails use something that's white okay and design for the job now all right so real quick i'm just going to go through the tools that i use i have a slow mixer all right this is designed for mud mixing and thinset mixing and that sort of thing and it just isn't on [Laughter] it's made to be really quiet all right and you can see that's not mixing a thousand rpms okay it's nice and slow and it's designed for that way for a reason so we're gonna open up our box of mud and i'm going to mix it here for you i don't really need another box of mud right now but since we're talking about mud today i have enough pails lying around i might as well mix this up and show now there are different people who've got different techniques for doing this i've heard guys talk about they just flip it over and they've got some technique i think they go like this and they pull it down the size and for me that's always just made a huge mess and i'm not interested in mastering a technique that's going to make a hell of a mess until i master it so here's my secret pull it out flip it upside down while you hold the bag shut and you'll see the bag it's got the corners they're like handles so you set it in you grab those two and you can just wiggle it out now 75 of the mud is in the pail now but the bag is so full so what i do is i come down here and i just stretch that bag over the edge of the pail and that gets rid of most of the rest of the mud but more importantly it keeps you relatively clean now a box of mud is 20 okay if you really really want to you can squeeze it all out and then you know go wash up but i don't think it's worth a trip it's been five minutes washing up to save 25 cents now i got a whole pale whole bucket of mud in there lots of room to work with and i use one of these red cups wow had this around for a while let's go through this half a cup plus one box of mud is the perfect recipe for mixing mud for your your bed application the first coat even the second coat it works fine okay now when it comes time to doing your third coat you've got to add another half a cup so keep that in mind i like to make mud for the first and second coat and then i like to mix a brand new box for my third coats all my finals because it's a different concentration and i don't want to get into math going well i think that's about a half left and you know you'll always make it too wet or and it's just sloppy and makes a mess once you got a formula it's nice to stick with it now we put that in there we attach our mixer hand tighten it and now for the asmr nice and slow so you don't make a mess nice and deep as well you don't want to be up here near the top mixing because you'll get stuff flying all over the place put your feet on the side and hold it still and going on that angle it lifts and drops and lifts and drops okay okay now important to note have another pail three quarters full you can set that in okay you can wipe it down and wash it up once in a while as needed or you can just leave it in the water it's not gonna hurt anything so now we're gonna do the dairy queen demonstration now this is silky smooth right like silky smooth every time i say that it just reminds me of that stupid movie not so stupid it's kind of funny but put in the comment section if you know what movie silky smooth is from look at this right just making ourselves like a massive ice cream cone okay now this is an amazing mud maybe i had too much on there all right that's really good great to work with it holds its shape even if you're holding it sideways right easy to work while you're working with your mud always be flipping it inside like this right mixing the parts that are exposed to the air to the inside so it doesn't dry out and get all chunky and then when you're done just lift it off the side put it back in the pail all right keep your tools clean and then i want to watch this at the end of the day when you're finished take your knife and clean off the edge okay butter it back and forth if you have to make it smooth and flat proper maintenance of your mud is really important here there we go now you're going to want to have a pail with the sponge you can buy these in the tile department all right wipe around the top okay wipe around the edges you don't want to leave mud sitting around the edge okay because that stuff will go crunchy and dry and make a big mess okay and then before you cover it up at night just put a little bit of moisture on the top and if you don't have a tail you can just use your hawk all right and that way when you come back in two or three days the mud is still going to be moist it's not going to be all dried up on the edge and you'll be able to use it and tool it and use your knife and not have those hard chunks that fall in from the edge inside your mud that drive you crazy okay wow all right well guys well here we go if you like getting information that will help you avoid years and years of learning the hard way give this video a thumbs up don't forget to subscribe to the channel we've got a lot of great content coming we're here to help you out and if you have any other questions about mud go in the comments section below and ask because you know there may be something we didn't cover today i don't know but anyway if you are doing a drywall job of course you're gonna have to learn how to paint that thing so you can always follow along here click this link and we are going to show you our favorite painting secrets to how you can cut corners like a pro cheers to next time

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 71,309

Rating: 4.9787459 out of 5

Keywords: homerenovision, renovision, jeff thorman, homerenovisiondiy, joint compound, drywall finishing, joint compound drywall, mixing joint compound with water, drywall tips and tricks, joint compound corners, drywall finishing tips, drywall finishing for beginners, mesh tape and mud drywall, diy drywall taping and mudding, diy drywall finishing, drywall taping tips and tricks, joint compound drywall mud, types of joint compound for drywall, all purpose joint compound drywall

Id: Z4sEIDlBLVM

Length: 23min 45sec (1425 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021