hi I'm Shannon from host improvements
comm and today I'm going to show you how
to mud a butt joint so we've got some
drywalled walls and a very common
situation is where the ends of the
sheets butt together
there's no bevel or tapered edge on them
so they're you know they're just flushed
to each other and flush to the rest of
the surface of the wall so what we want
to do here is basically tape it first
and I'm going to show you a series of
all the different steps and actually
finishing this joint but obviously
you're gonna want to let the the joint
dry the mud dry in between every coat so
it won't appear that way on today's
video but we've just got some different
bot joints all set up at different
stages so so I've got my paper tape I've
got it torn or ripped off to the
approximate length that I need
I've thin my mud out a little wetter
than I would normally use for coating
and I'm just gonna smear right on that
joint liberally by the way just note how
the butt joint is screwed the screws are
a little closer together about every 16
inches and one screw on every sheet I
just thought I'd point that out before I
covered it all up did I say 16 inches I
meant six inches apart my camera guys
telling me I just said 16 so I must have
okay so I put a nice liberal amount of
mud on there I want to take my paper
tape and Center it on that joint just
lightly press it in with my fingertips
and now I'm just going to take the same
knife I'm using a about a three inch
knife and I'm gonna hold my tape with
one finger just squeeze out the excess
at one end I mean the two sides off now
I can work my way down for the MER
doesn't matter if you start at the top
ever more comfortable with so I'm just
pushing the Cape against the wall not
using a lot of pressure just enough to
flatten it out and push some of the
excess mud oh you don't want to squeeze
it all out I'll just kind of clean it up
as I go and very last a little bit here
a little short from the floor but the
baseboards gonna big deal and I just
want to make sure that I didn't leave
any little ridges behind like this here
so that I don't have to deal with any
chunks in my next coats that peel off
when I hit them with the trowel so okay
so that's the first step we want to tape
that if you're using regular mud like
this like not a hot mud that dries
quickly just regular mud just let that
dry overnight or however long it takes
and then you can move on to the next
step and we'll set up and show you that
one okay so here's a joint that's
already taped so it's it's had the tape
on now what we're gonna do is our next
coat for that coat I use a curved trowel
I don't know if the camera can see down
there you can see that this trowel
basically goes like that so what that
does is I I basically run one swipe
Center right over this this tape and it
just builds up the center a little bit
because we have no bevel here to try to
hide that this transition so it just
builds up a little thicker read over the
tape and then we feather it out from
there and to use this I I usually work
with a hawk as well just as easier to
manage if you don't have one of these
trowels basically on this coat what
you'd want to do is take your flat
trowel maybe about eight inches wide and
just try to build this up to cover the
tape you know I mean by build it up I
don't mean through an eighth of an inch
thick
blob of mud over it but you know
sixteenth to 1/32 or something like that
anyways just so it covers the tape up
before I start I'm just gonna take my
knife here anywhere where there is a
little Ridge of the dried mud or
anything just give it a quick little
scrape
you don't mean to sound it you shouldn't
need to just kind of knock off any
chunks that were there and load up a
little bit of this mud on my Hawk I load
up my Hawk and I'm just basically wiping
it over this joint like I said and
trying to leave it relatively smooth as
well so if you using this trial I'm
trying to load the center part of the
trowel and it'll just naturally work its
way out to the edges as I as I work with
it so there's some there start down
there
okay so we've just basically got it
roughly on there I cleaned my trowel off
on the hawk again and I'm gonna pull
right across the whole thing once and
just have a look at what I've got you
can see how it's covering really well
down near the bottom the tape starts to
show here a little bit that's pretty
common it's it's tough to get it all
covered in one shot sometimes I've got a
few little air bubbles so I'm just gonna
pull one more time and I don't know if
you could see the angle I really had on
that if this is my wall here the back of
the hawk I'm using the trowel on about
that much of an angle so I don't know
what that is maybe 15 degrees or
something like that
okay and I'm pretty happy with that
we're gonna leave that and we'll move on
to the next next coat okay so now for
our next coat we're at our next spot
here and again I just want to take my
putty knife here chip off any little
chunks that we're left sticking
and that looks pretty good I'm gonna
load up some mud now this time I'm using
a street our flat trowel and at this
point I'm just gonna feather it out a
little bit more so this one here the
street down the length of it and what
I'm basically going to do is about Oh
1/2 or 3/4 of a trowel width on each
side of the joint I can just see the
joint is about right here okay so I'm
just trying to build it up a little bit
and taper it out on the outside edges to
to nothing so this time I'm gonna load
up one side of my trowel to this side
just kind of get that edge done now I'm
going back to the other side of my
trowel okay so I just get some mud on
there to work with okay so actually I'm
gonna need it anyways so anyways I've
got the joint loaded loaded up there now
I want to work on tapering out to
nothing on the two edges but still
leaving a bit of thickness up the middle
so I'm just doing that by how I position
the the pressure on my trowel so if I'm
out here I'm obviously trying to push
harder over here than I am in the center
and when I'm there I'm doing the
opposite so I'm just kind of working
that night along on each side so you can
see I've made that that patchwork wider
as I've gone through each each pass here
so we're just like that I'm gonna clean
off that a little bit extra
we're in there okay so just like that so
that was that step now we have one more
okay get it completely finished out
we're gonna move over there and
basically I'm going to what I'm going to
do there I'm going to put one I'm using
the flat trial again I'm going to put
one rate centered over and do pretty
much a full width ode on each side of
that as well so we'll move over to that
one and show you how to do it okay so
here we are for what should be our last
coat and like I said I'm just feathering
it out even more than what we've got
here is I'm going to run one up the
middle great a boat where the tape is
not and then I'm just loading kind of
one side of my trowel again to get wider
okay so it looks a little goofy right
now but I'll end up stealing enough mud
off of it as I work it out to fill in
the gaps
so again it's all about how you're
getting the pressure of your trowel so
that you can leave a buildup a mud hear
a little bit but ending up with nothing
out on the odor edges okay so we should
be pretty close there again I'm using
about that same angle maybe 1015 degrees
of the trowel against the wall and
that's that's what you should end up
with so we ended up with you know good
to two-and-a-half trials wide and if it
if that still seems like quite a hump
maybe you've got a bit of a problem
there you can fan it out even wider and
so basically what this is doing let me
put this down what we're doing by doing
this is trying to eliminate once you've
painted this joint flashing which means
basically the the light reflecting on it
shows a bit of a shadow or shows how
much of a hump is here so if we can
build it out far enough it makes that
bump even more a little more gradual I
guess would be the right wording so
that's not is noticeable and doesn't
show up as easy
okay so again as in my other drywall
videos or mudding videos that you've
seen you're trying to leave your your
coats as smooth as you can one to
eliminate having to sand in between
coating and then finally also for your
last coat so that you don't have to do
as much sanding if you don't have ridges
and holes and everything else in there
so like said you know build it out as
far as you think you need to try not to
build this up too much in the center I
mean you
to build it up enough to hide the tape
that's what you're what you're shooting
for okay and then just a lights and over
that we'll get rid of anything and you
can see my sanding drywall video to
cover that part okay so hopefully you
enjoyed and learn from what I showed you
here this is my method of doing it the
I'm not saying it's the only method out
there but this is how I would do it if
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