 Hi, I'm Mark Donovan from Home Edition Plus.com. Today, I'm going to teach you the basics of how to tape and mud drywall. The first thing you need when you mud and tape and drywall is a bucket of joint compound. We have a small bucket here for a project that we're doing because it's a very small project, but typically you buy this in one to five gallon pails. It basically need about one gallon 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 a crease and center of it, or you can use this sticking fiberglass tape that I prefer to apply to the walls. I like this because you eliminate one step of mudding in the process. The next thing you need is a tape knife. Usually I start out with either a three inch or six inch tape 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 to work from. This mud pan has a nice sharp edge here, such as 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 for smoothing down the edges. Applying the tape coat layer. The first thing we're going to do is apply the fiberglass sticky tape, sticky side to the surface of the wall, and center it approximately in the middle of the joint between the two pieces of the sheet rock. And then just take your hand and work your way down, pushing it in, pushing it flush up against the dry wall. Now that we have the tape in place, we're going to take our tape knife and put some joint compound on it. And we're going to apply a little joint compound to the seam. And then make sure you have all of it kind of pushed in. And once we've done that, we just take our trowelage and just kind of really press it in there. And keep working our way down the length of the board. We're going to make sure we cover all of the mesh tape. Want to do a little bit of metal with your application here. And we're not worried about getting it too perfect at this point. We're just trying to make sure it's nicely covering the tape. We're going to try to take off the high parts, as much as we can, with a lightly touch. And that's all we'll do for now. We'll let this dry. Once we've covered the seams with tape and mud, we want to cover the nails. So we take our putting knife and just simply pile a little putty over the nail. After doing your main seams and your nails, we want to apply tape and mud to your corners. Simply take a piece again of the sticky tape and try to put it on so that it applies up the center of the seam. Once done, let's center out the tape. When that's done, take your tape and knife and apply a little bit of coat. I'm going to come down to the seam. Once you've completed the first coat of tape and mud on the seams, let it dry and we'll come back later and 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 nail areas. So taking a sponge sand paper block, we can simply go over the edges and round the nail, knocking off any high cloths. And then on the joint, again, probably mainly on the edges, making sure you get all the high-priced spots off. And then leaving lots of material on the center of the joint through as is. With that, we're ready to put the second coat of mud on. Now we're going to apply the second coat of mud to the joint. Basically, let's then film a joint compound over the seam, feathering it out, making it larger than it was before. Now that we have the seam done, we just go over the nails and painting it out with more of a joint compound. Now that we have around the edges, we're going to cut it larger than the surface. We'll let this dry and we will do a third coat. Now that the second coat is dry, it's time to lightly sand the edges again and then apply the final finish coat of mud onto the seams. Applying the finished coat. Now we're going to apply the finished coat of mud to the seam. This is the final coat on its spread and the seam out a little bit further, two inches further than the existing mud. Rice and thin is working way down the seam. The last thing we're going to do is put the finishing coat over the nail hole. With the finished coat of mud now dry, all we need to do is lightly sand it on the edges of the nail and on the edges of the paint. And our mudding and taping is done. All we need to do now is just wipe down the walls with the rag, dry rag, getting off all the dust, and then we simply prime and paint the walls and we're done. So good luck with your taping mudding project and for additional home improvement information visit homeadditionplus.com. Thanks.