I don't blame you. Every time I took antibiotics in the last 5 or so years, there was some kind of complications it seemed.
Hey Nancy, the drywall is looking good. You got the hard part done! The taping and mudding is a piece of cake! Dang, your 5'5"? You beat me by 5"! Now you know why I don't do many "over head" projects! LOL Mike takes 1000 mg of B12 every day. His doctor prescribed a steriod pack for his back pain but after we read all the possible side effects, he decided to hold off unless it got worse. It does seem to be getting better. Yep, gotta be careful taking any prescribed medications. How did we make it growing up when there wasn't anything but old fashioned homemade remedies?
@Pam Sellers, is that the same injury your husband had a month ago? That's a long time. Must be frustrating for him. Agree about the steroids. I was supposed to take them for this sinus infection wild goose chase, but after reading the possible long term side effects I stopped after the first day. Scary stuff. I always wanted to be shorter in high school. If you wore heels, which you had .to do at special occasions or you weren't with it, I was taller than half the boys. It seems like most of the young kids are taller now than back then. So you have experience in finishing drywall? Are you for hire? It doesn't look easy to me. I don't see how this is ever going to work. There are going to be cracks, and it's going to look ugly. In spite of trying to get everything square, it's STILL not square in there. So frustrating. So messy. White powder everywhere and I'm tracking it all over the house now.
You will be surprised how much the drywall compound will make imperfections look better. Just might take a couple of applications of smoothing and letting it dry and sand. Then apply another application. After you get it where you are satisfied, put a coat of Kilz and then paint. Nothing in this house is square and after all it's just a closet! How many guests will notice? You can do this!
Hanging actual drywall I find to be fairly easy (except ceilings), but taping and mudding is always messy, although there are degrees of mess. Try a simple seam first and see how it looks. You can get instructions online or at the store where you buy supplies. If you have inside corners, I would recommend getting a corner trowel, as I don't know any other way for a "handyperson" to get a smooth corner. Outside corners are not so bad. Use a lot of pre-mixed mud and use a lot. I like the "light" types as they seem to be easier to use to me. I like three coats of mud and get it as smooth as you can as that reduces the sanding and produces a better joint. I usually use a 6" knife to start and finish with a 12" knife. I am no expert, but I have done a good bit of it. @Frank Sanoica has built a house from scratch, so he may have some pointers.
The getting it square part is not because of the looks so much. I'm not that picky about a closet. But it makes it difficult to cut pieces of drywall to fit right. I'm not sure yet how big a crack you can leave between pieces. And then you have to sort when you buy the sheets of drywall, because half of them are already damaged at the store. Try sorting drywall sheets for fun sometime, at 52 lbs each, and bulky. Not like sorting lumber. I've been following all the rules, like doing the ceiling first, but they say do the walls from top to bottom too. That is just too much trouble, holding a piece up in the air, so I'm not following that rule! One advantage of doing it yourself is you save enough money to more than pay for the right tools. I like tools. Good for cluttering up the basement. lol
There are several ways to do this, but based on what the dental surgeon said .he was going to do, and the conversations and noises while it was going on, this animation seems to be closest to what I had done today. Took less than an hour. Not allowed to do any drywall, sneeze, spit or blow my nose, before Monday. He said face would swell up on one side. Trying to prevent that from happening with ice. So far, so good. Local anesthetic, so I could drive home. He said I was only his 3rd patient to do it with a local. Couldn't feel a thing during, after the first couple of shots.
@Don Alaska "@Frank Sanoica has built a house from scratch, so he may have some pointers." 200 8X4 foot sheets went into the house. Seemed to take forever! A few key things I learned are: Wall studs and ceiling joists need to form as flat a plane as possible. IOW, if one stud "sticks out" just a bit, for whatever reason, the finished wall will look "bumpy" The rectangular "mud bucket" typically used when taping and finishing, tends to form small hardened bits which cling to the drywall knife, creating imperfections in the form of gouges which will forever show through paint; wallpaper covers many blemishes, whole 'nuther story, though. The hotter and drier the air, the more difficult the finishing job, as the applied "mud" dries before being properly finished. Drywall is called "tapered edge" because along it's long edges it is a bit thinner on the good side, to allow taped joints to be invisible, no "hump" showing. The taper is knifed full of "mud", then a strip of "tape" is knifed onto the wet mud. When dried, unless a quite wide knife was used, an additional "swipe" of mud completes bringing the surface to "flat". Two types of tape are typically encountered. One is paper, sold in rolls, the other is a rather stiff lattice, like screen, which has a "sticky" stuff that adheres to the drywall joint with no mud applied first. The mud is applied after the tape. I never got got results with that type. Frank
Tools cluttering the basement?? I can just imagine.....I have been working on the garage,prepping for painting.
@Frank Sanoica , you got me started now.... This is exactly what happened on the last large piece I put up. Stud next to the corner sticks out farther. If it just makes a bump, it doesn't matter, it won't show behind clothes. If it causes the corner to crack I won't like it, just because I know it's there. I've got 'til Monday to think about fixing it. It won't be simple. When the temps change from, probably 32F, to 120F in an unheated closet, I'm afraid all the joints will crack just from expansion and contraction. Tried that mesh sticky tape on a patch job once, and it kept moving. I'm going with the paper tape. I guess my biggest questions are simple ones: 1. How big a crack between pieces of drywall can be covered? They say leave at least 1/8". At most ? 2. If a 2 inch corner of one piece is cracked, can you fix it when you finish it? When I see all the damaged sheets at the store that apparently get sold anyway, it makes me think you must be able to get away with a lot of imperfections. This is where lack of experience really hurts, questions that are too elementary for anyone to even explain on a YouTube video.
Joe, If I had a corner of my basement that looked that neat and orderly I would be so happy. What is that red thing? Looks like a fire hydrant? Good luck with your painting job. Indoors? I used to hate painting more than anything.
@Nancy Hart I've covered a 1/4-inch gap successfully. Large broken off corners and the like will not last if filled with mud. I used patching plaster to fill them, best if it can be bought containing hair (no kidding), "hair plaster" was used nearly a century ago when walls were plastered by hand, over wooden lath. Our old place in Illinois showed traces of hair, when plaster was broken. One "out": drywall (gypsum wallboard) is universally required by building codes, because of it's fire resistance. However, no reason why nice wood panelling cannot be installed over the drywall, in which case sloppy installation won't matter! Frank