Checking To Make Sure Screws Sit Below The Surface

My wife called me up from my office to watch Ask This Old House show how to finish  inside and outside drywall corners.

Outside Corners by Ask This Old House
First they showed outside corners. I was happy to see that they recommended using corner brace that was either all vinyl or all metal with no paper. (Paper-faced outside corner bead is to be avoided!) And I liked how they showed the application of coats. They left out several  seemingly-insignificant details however. First you must always, always, always scrape down the surface level before applying the next coat! A pimple-size bump of mud will give you a nice speed bump when you apply the next coat! It only takes a minute or two to knock off any such bumps before applying the next coat and it is essential to do. Another crucial step left out was to check to see that no fastening screws or nails were sticking up, as shown in the photo here – these will also mess up your job! My outside corner procedure includes these crucial steps.

Inside Corners by Ask This Old House
In their procedure, they recommended the paper-faced metal corner bead. Now this bead works nicely on the perfectly square sample mini-wall they demonstrated on but in reality, most walls are not so ideal. If your 8-ft long corner has even the slightest curve or bend in it, the nice perfect metal corner will not want to conform – the result is a pocket of air under part of the corner bead! Been there and done that! Instead, I prefer paper tape, which will follow the contour of the wall, using multiple steps to make a perfectly straight looking corner even if the corner you started out with was not straight, as shown in my inside  corner procedure.

Moral of the story: Don’t trust everything you see on TV!

• Use paper tape. NEVER mesh tape! Mesh is easily snagged by a taping knife, and that is very easy to do here since you are skimming down both sides of the corner.
• Do not use metal-backed corners that are mudded on. In theory, these seem like the perfect solution. But if you wall is not perfectly level, the metal will cause the corner to “pop off”, resulting in gaps in the mud underneath.
• Wet down the paper by very quickly passing through a bucket of water. Shake off the tape to remove most of the water. You don’t want the tape to be wet (and shred), just slightly dampened. A spray bottle would also work.
• Follow the procedure shown in the video below (there is audio to go with the diagram). Also, go to http://www.drywallinfo.com/insidecorners.html for detailed steps, photos, and videos.

I asked my contractor friend how he finished peaks of cathedral ceilings or any other inside corners of angle greater than 90 degrees. He told me about a product called Straitflex. Strait Flex comes in a roll and is a stiff fiber product with a creasing area in its center. So it makes a perfect crease, and because it comes in a roll, it will tape an entire ceiling with a nice straight joint. So I tried some of this myself. You can see my complete trial at Taping Wide Angle Drywall Corners. This product worked really well! A few precautions to take are to pre-fill any gaps at the corner first, make sure to place plenty of mud at the corner, and don’t expect this tape to conform to the wall like paper – it is fairly stiff and if you imbed it too tightly, it will “bounce” back and create a gap. Still, I would highly recommend this product, or something similar for arched ceiling peaks or other wide inside angles.