• Major drywall taping pages will be cleaned up so the code does not cause problems with alternative browsers. These changes will consist of replacing excessive old code that I put in way back using FrontPage 2003 with up-to-date validated code that uses CSS and is error checked.
• A more comprehensive top menu so you may find this blog from any page.
• Videos converted to Flash format so users with Macs can view them. I did not realize this was a problem til some helpful site visitor pointed it out recently.

Hopefully, you find these changes helpful. It will take a bit of time to do all these changes, but I have already completed the drywallinfo home page and much of the the drywall taping joints page. As always, I welcome any input you have. Also, I will gladly help you with any drywall questions you have on your current drywall project. Contact me at mikesemail2000-drywall@yahoo.com .

Scraping Off The Bumps

When I first tried taping and finishing drywall, it was quite a dusty mess! See my description on My Drywall Story page. Drywall dust is just plain dreadful. In my early days of drywalling, some friends told me about “wet sanding”. This is where you use a wet sponge to smooth out the surface between coats instead of sanding and is a method mentioned on the 649 6th blog that chronicles his home remodel. And yes, wet sanding does cut down the dust to practically nothing.

But . . . for me, anyway, wet sanding tended to take off a lot of compound. And worse yet, and I speak for my own experience, I ended up making gentle waves in my wall with the wet sponge. So I ended up adding a lot of extra compound to flatten the waves out, and I ended up doing a bit of sanding at the end anyway.

The method I finally arrived at, and this took several years, was to not sand at all until all the coats were on the wall. Yes, that’s right, NO sanding! Here is what you do: You put on even coats with slightly thinned mud and make an effort to draw off the coats level with a wide knife.  Then, after this dries, you scrape the surface level with a taping knife (see pic above), holding the knife with two hands if needed. The taping knife will not produce valleys, but will instead knock off troublesome high spots. And low spots or drag marks will be filled with the next coat, which will go on nicely on your nice level surface. Only at the very end do I sand, and then only lightly, producing only a relatively small amount of dust. To get lots and lots of details, see my Taping Joints page and videos.