I hate sheetrock. Now that we have that out of the way.... Being dad the Handyman means doing things you like as well as things you don't like...or even hate. I've got the Taunton book on sheetrock, all the best tools, and have read countless articles on it so now I am an expert. Right? Well, if you've been around while I've worked on it you know I am far from it.
My house was built during the late 90s boom in our area, when straight lumber was hard to find, and contractors who gave a crap about quality even harder to find. Oh, and inspectors to make sure they were doing a good job? Hello? Beuhler? You only need to check out my collapsing deck to know that nobody was checking this work for quality. I think they drove by to make sure a house was actually there and then signed off on it.
As a result my house has incredibly wavy walls. The previous owners solution to the 1/2" gaps behind the counters was to caulk it 'til it hurt. And hurt it does...my eyes. It's so ugly that I can't take it, and I definitely can't do the same thing when I install the built in bookcase I am nearly finished with.
I have a 1/2" gap over a 24" stretch of wall. The options are to tear it out and fix the studs, or mud, mud, mud. I chose to use mud.
I mixed the 45 minute mud to peanut-butter consistency in a 5 gallon pail. Transfered it to the 12 inch trowel with a curved trowel, made just for taking joint compound out of buckets. They make cleaning so much easier too. I took the trowel at 45 degree angle to the wall, near the bottom and worked my way up as far as I could go. I did this a few times to get it fairly smooth. That took about 5 minutes. Cleaningup took about 20. Fun. The first layer doesn't have to be pretty since it is just taking up some of the gap. The biggest problem is that the 12" trowel isn't wide enough to cover the edges of the gap so I don't know how this is going to work. I decided to take one of my daughters to their favorite store; Home Depot! Believe it or not, they love going there. I picked up a cement trowel that is 20" long and my daughter approved. We also need a new wheelbarrow and she liked the blue one, which was the contractor-grade, so we were both happy and took it home.
Layer 2: The next day I went for the second layer. Unfortunately I didn't mix it like peanut butter this time. It was more like jelly. Not good. I should have went back and added a little more powder but instead I tried to keep working. I did the same bottom to top "technique", this time with the new trowel. It came out bubbly, the stuff poured out all over the place, and me. The good news is that the gap is only 1/4" now so I actually think I'm making progress. I'll try again tonight...
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