Hi, I am Mark Donovan from HomeAdditionPlus.com and today, we are going to teach you the basics of how to tape and mud drywall. The first thing you need when you mud and tape a drywall is a bucket of joint compound. We have a small bucket here for the project that we are doing because it is a very small project. But typically you buy this in one to five galloon pails and basically, you will need about one galloon for every 100 square feet of drywall surface area. The next thing you need is tape. You can either use this two inch paper tape that has crease on the center of it or you can use this sticky fiber glass tape that I prefer to apply to the walls. I like this because you eliminate one step of mudding in the process. Next thing you need is a taping knife. Usually, I start out with either a three inch or a six inch taping knife to apply the tape to the wall and then in later coats, I use a wider knife to feather out the seam.
The next thing you need is a mud pan for putting the joint compound in. This mud pan has a nice, sharp edge here so that you can clean your knife as you work along. And finally, you need sandpaper. This is a screen paper and then we have a sand block that can be used in smoothing down the edges and applying the tape coat layer. The first thing we are going to do is we are going to apply the fiber glass sticky side to the surface of the wall. And center partially in the middle of the joint, between the two pieces of the sheet rack or drywall and then just take your hand and work your way down to pushing in, pushing against the drywall.
Now that we have tape in place, we will take our taping knife, put some joint compound on it and we are going to apply a little joint compound to the seam. Make sure you hold it. And once we have done that, we just take our drywall and just kind of really press it in there. Kind of keep working our way down the length with the board. We will make this until we cover all of the mesh tape. Do not worry about getting it too perfect at this point. We are just trying to make sure it has nicely covered the tape. We are going to take out the high parts. As you can, just lightly touch and that is all we do for now. We will let this dry. Once we have covered the seams with tape and mud, we want to cover the nails. So take a paddy knife and just simply pile the paddy over the nail.
After doing your main seams and your nails, you want to apply tape and mud to your corner. Simply take a piece again of the sticky tape and try it in the center. Try to put it on so that it applies with the center of the seam., right down the center of the tape. After that is done, take your knife and apply a coat joint compound to the seam. So, once you have completed the first coat of taping mud on the seams, let it dry, we will come back later to put the second coat on.
Applying the second coat of mud, now that the first coat of mud is dried on the tape, we want to briefly just sand down the edges of the mud around the tape and the nails. So taking a Sponge Sand Paper Block, we just simply go over the edges around the nail, not going up any high though. And then on the joint, again, scrub mainly on the edges. With that, we are going to put the second coat of mud on. Now, we are going to apply the second coat of mud to the joint. Basically, put in the joint compound over the seam. Now that we have the seams on, we just go over the nails again and add a little bit more of the joint compound, gather it over around the edges, having it fill the larger surface. Allow this to dry and we will do a third coat.
Now that the second coat is dry, it is time to let this sand the edges again and then apply the final finish coat of mud onto the seams. Now, we are going to apply the finish coated mud to the seam. This is the final coat, we want to spread to the seam at a little bit further, about two inches further than the existing mud. Nice and thin just work your way down the seam. So the last thing we are going to do is put the finishing coat over the nail. With the finished coated mud now dry, all we need to do is wipe the sand down the edges on the nail and along the edges of the seam and our mudding and taping is done. All we need to do now is just wipe down the walls with the dry rag, getting off all the dust and then we simply prime and paint the walls and we are done.
So, good luck with your taping and mudding project. And for additional home improvement information, visit HomeAdditionPlus.com. Thanks.
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