Tape & Mud

We had this spot in our ceiling that my hubs went all destructo on (as seen in the posts entitled “Well, it’s official.” and “Hey! Good News!“) that I really really really really really wanted to get fixed before we had everyone over for Thanksgiving.

Yeah, that didn’t happen.

I did, however, manage to at least tape & mud the cracks around the patch (when it’s that big is it even considered a “patch” anymore?) so it wasn’t quite so construction zone in here.

Oh, you say you’ve never taped? You’ve never known the sheer joy that is sheetrock mudding?

Well, it’s not difficult. The supplies consist of sheetrock tape (I was using the sticky mesh kind because that’s what we had on hand, but I actually prefer the non-sticky paper variety), some type of sheetrock mud (again, this is what we had on hand) and a putty knife/mud knife/trowel/whatever-you-wanna-call-the-thing-you-apply-the-mud-with.

If you use paper tape, apply a coat of mud to the crack, stick the tape to it, and then apply mud over the top of the tape. Don’t really worry about getting it smooth, you’re [probably] going to have to sand it anyway!

If you use mesh tape like me, just stick it on there!  No pre-mud necessary.

Once you have all the cracks/nail heads/screw heads taped, slap some mud on there! In my photo you can tell I would have to mud mine twice to cover all the mesh (one reason I don’t prefer that type of tape), but I plan to texture the whole darn thing anyway so I probably won’t mud it again, just sand down the points so they don’t interfere with my texture pattern.

I got this part done before Thanksgiving, but unfortunately didn’t get to the texturing/painting step before everyone started arriving. Oh well! I know everyone understood that our house is a definite work in progress!