I am gonna put it to the test as soon as I am done with this comment and visit Lowes to buy what I need. Choose between a dry powder you mix with water and a premixed mud. It’s time for…SKIM COATING! Also keep a mud pan and a damp rag handy. However, if you are a remodeler who do wall skimming to repair wrecked walls only on certain occasions, it will be tough to master this skill. Feel free to get in touch with Interior drywall solutions in Auckland today. I love hearing when people are using my tutorials to fix their homes! If the paint doesn’t show signs of that, you might be ok to skim coat. They know how to skim coat walls which are heavily looked at or have bright lights over them. I do not recommend the roller because it does not go on thick enough. I am going to go without the primer and see how that works. Please see our full disclosure here. Then I noticed that one 'room' had knock-down and the other 'room' had orange peel.It took two coats (at least) of skimming to get the room smooth. Thanks! Hi! You should start by prepping the wall surfaces. It’s a judgment call, eventually you get a feel for what will work and when. Skim coating takes time and effort. Wasn’t an available formula when I first started DIYing, so it’s a relatively new product. I wanted to know what helpful tips that you have for clean up? I hope you find these tutorials helpful and conquer your room with ease! Glad you found it helpful! The paint roller trick is a great technique for skim coating over walls that have a lot of cosmetic damage, after wallpaper removal or in this case a bad knockdown texture job. I’m finding out this home improvement stuff isn’t for the faint of heart. I do like the sponge enough for quick repairs! From what I have seen here and other places, using pre-mixed, light joint compound would give a smooth finish much easier, but I do not want to go back and have to repair damage that might occur in the future. And that’s also why I recommended the primer before painting and not some kind of paint/primer combo. Very helpful! Your directions are easy to understand and real. *wink*, Wow- great tutorial and such a big messy dusty job!! These kits come with a connection hose that allows you to hook up the sander to a shop vac, eliminating about 90-95% of the dust that you will experience. But by tackling this task on your own, you can save on the labour. This helps tremendously. What did you do about the walls behind toilet and the sink? The paint roller trick is a great technique for skim coating over walls that have a lot of cosmetic damage, after wallpaper removal or in this case a bad knockdown texture job. We should have replaced the drywall, but instead, we floated the entire surface of the wall; 3 coats of mud. & the reason you don’t wipe your skim coat with a damp cloth — besides ruining all your hard work — is that primer is different than paint, & primer applied to walls with some dust will not flake off the way paint does. Cheers again for your inspiration. Hi there. It was plastic with a silver paper backing. I just bought a house on the water for my wife of 45 years. Which brings me to my next tip:  The right tools for this job are key. Any help is appreciated! Skim coat will also enhance the appeal of the room where you generally host a lot of guests. 100 points to, I eventually got the hang of timing my evening right so that I wouldn’t have leftover mud, but if you wind up with some. Thanks much! Thanks Sarah for this wonderful and helpful post! Just like you, gotta go to work and continue the project after hours. Under paint you write “Even the nicest paints will have trouble sticking to new mud. This tutorial is so good…probably the best one out there, I even had a few laughs; I.e., take a shower woman! But there are times when smoothing and painting an existing layer of wallpaper is the most expedient rout. Had to order the RX-35 since no one carries it around here, think it will be worth it based on your experiences. It might be worth your while sealing the wall with gardz or an oil-based primer, such as cover stain, BEFORE AND AFTER skim coating. Reellucky, Thank you SO MUCH! Make sure to mix all-purpose joint compound in about the same consistency as mud that you would use for bedding the tape. This is my first time reading your blog and as a lifespan human developmental/behavioral specialist (and professional trainer) I was truly impressed by your delightful tutorial on skim coating walls. As you will need to apply 2-3 coats and let each one the coats dry in between. I am removing wall paper and a lot of the dry wall underneath is getting gouged. I am working to smooth out the walls in my San Francisco house that was built in the late 1990s with that horrible orange peel texture. But if you want to save your money, clear up the confusion, and feel more like a pro (who doesn’t? I am so glad i found this. I’m working on a series on my emails that highlights some of my best tutorials and tips, so hopefully you’ll enjoy those once it launches! It’s important to be systematic in your approach; any missed spots will be highlighted once you paint the wall. Hmm, is there any bubbling that you need to scrape away? In this technique, you will not only need to prime the spot, but you will also need to roll on the whole wall by using a stain-blocking sealer. And so glad to have you following! Just ensure that the next coat you to mix is a little thicker, you can do this by spooning in some more mud from another bucket. Skim coating an entire wall or ceiling will require plenty of time to work before the mud gets hard. We are thinking about putting up paint-able wall paper with a subtle pattern to keep our original design & colors. Glad to hear it! So if you want to keep your walls pristine after all of that hard work, don’t skimp on the last step! For corners, you use the taping knife edge in the corner and feather it out on both sides. Came out looking good once it was painted, however….. With the entire wall surface being joint compound, it is not durable. You’ll want to continue doing this across the wall, but since the mud is impressionable until it cures, be careful not to overlap the edges of your various passes across the same wall or else find yourself working to fix a patch of wall you were already done with. ” Is the oil-based primer you are referring to the RX-35? ): Tool shopping tips:  All-purpose joint compound is cheap, but I wanted to share a little tip to make things easy for you when shopping at the big box stores. I also live in an UDH. Hi, my bud just forwarded me your article. I have made an absolute disaster of an area in my kitchen & I feel relief after stumbling upon your website. No big, right? Girl – I’m coming at you from 2019 and I keep debating on doing this. Great blog post! I wouldn’t worry about little ridges since those can be sanded out and another coat put over them once smooth. Skimming is effectively a plastering … It can also be applied with a paint roller for high-quality smoothness. When first putting up drywall, you screw it in place, tape the seams, and cover them with joint compound. Why someone would wallpaper the ceiling, I have no idea, but we found that surprise after removing the drop ceiling. This tutorial is amazing!! You can’t just slap it on and expect a smooth finish in the end. So if you want to keep your walls pristine after all of that hard work, don’t skimp on the last step! I am also repairing my powder room from a bad wallpaper removal using your tips and techniques. I have to say it is not easy! http://blip.tv/easy-home-renos/product-review-richard-vac-pole-dust-free-drywall-sanding-kit-4273449. Make sense? While the idea sounds great and certainly lessens the dust (which does go everywhere), I found that I could not sand rapidly or precisely enough using the attachment. Also try a knock down trowel they are very wide and can spread out and skim coat much quicker. Hip hip, hooray. ), walk a few aisles over to where they sell the drywall. If you’re soaking down your walls to that extent every time you brush your teeth though, you should probably just tile the bathroom walls instead of gamble with drywall at all, since drywall IS sensitive to moisture (and standards have changed for items like the shower walls — they use cement board and no longer use drywall in those spots for exactly this reason). In this case, would I need to prime before skim coating since there is already a coat of paint on the wall? I'm Sarah. I have diluted and put down the toilet and have also tried cleaning my tools outside although I don’t think dumping it down the sewer drain is the most environmentally friendly method. I will let you know how it turns out. A skim coat, also known as a level-five drywall finish, is a thin coat of diluted joint compound that can be applied by hand, paint roller or spray rig. Apply your joint compound to fill in the damaged areas and lightly sand to feather in the edges. I'm in my 20s and just started learning how to do home improvements, so thank you so much for documenting this stuff. So glad you found my tutorial then! Unless otherwise stated, all images owned by Sarah Fogle & the Ugly Duckling House. To do it right, you’ll want joint compound, a mud pan, a wet rag, and a much wider knife called a joint knife or taping knife – I chose the 10-incher simply because I’m small, in a small space, and wielding anything larger felt like using a snow shovel – but there are wider versions available at your local Blue or Orange. This won’t change your price, but may share some commission. You’re welcome! You’ll want to scrape the knife across the wall in such a way as to leave a little of the mud behind, filling in the ridges and gouges while skimming over the entire surface. For my project, I was going from heavily textured walls that even with sanding were not really flat (not merely a little uneven from wallpaper, etc). Thank you very much. Being a visual learner, I found this so helpful. I had the same problem after smoothing a wall in a high traffic area. Pull the Magic Trowel over the compound, smoothing it out. Got a question? I love that you tell me all the things NOT to do, that I would have ordinarily done. I spent several hours the other night trying to figure out what the heck I was doing when it came to making my walls look presentable after thinking “I’ll just rip down this wallpaper and paint, and it’ll be a cinch!” No siree-bob. Also, try to keep the surface as even as possible, so you can do the squeegee work in a better way. I have just started sharing my DIY passion with the world and I glad to meet a kindred soul. I'm think of buying and cutting drywall for practice. Next lesson I’ve learned:  To do it right, you will have to put in the time and effort. Do you have any tips for what you’ve done? The purpose of priming is to seal the wall so that the skim coat doesn’t bubble. It is coming along though; primed my hallway and 2 of the walls in my main living space, I took my time and have to admit I am sick of it already! I can’t tell you how much DIYers love hearing success stories from the tips we share! (Though I was frightened at first, it didn’t automatically self level for 12 hours.) I chose a hand/pole combo sander so that I have the option to use a pole extension for the ceiling areas, and also a comfortable and controllable grip to get the areas closer to the floor. It does have a rather strong odor but it is worth putting up with for a day to get better looking results. I took the wallpaper off the kids bathroom wall, and it was surprisingly easy… but the wall has this weird texture to it, so I haven't painted it yet. Val spar ceiling paint is fine, sherwin williams is also good- ask for ceiling paint, if they are confused tell them “the old Duron color code 914white”. I tried skim coating it on my own and stopped halfway through. My question is: Can I apply the mud to the bare wall or should I primer first. :). Repair to the walls as well as the skim coating take a lot of time and labor. It works well on interior wall panels with its gypsum. Thanks again! It will taper the edges and you will have no taping knife marks or trowel. Finally I’ve found something which helped me. You only need to apply it on the edges of the damaged paper. Ahhh!! I like your work station and tool display. What is skimming & how to skim coat walls. Skim coating is a texturing technique used to make a wall smooth. If there are many peaks and valleys on the wall surface, use the 100-grit sandpaper first. During your skim coating process, you watered it down, scraped it along a wall with gouges, dirt, and (in my case) tiny bits of paper coming off the wall. When ‘Sair’ was 5, and getting ready to start Kindergarten, she was practicing writing her name, and she asked me, “Momma, why does my name have an ‘H’ on the end?” Well, I had a dozen answers for her, but I paused for a second, puzzling over which one to offer her first… But before I could say a thing, Sair excitedly raised her hand, and she said, “I know! Well, lets say the living room was easy because the walls were prime before. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Tomato Tomahto. I get to sand tomorrow afternoon and night. Hey there! If you find such an area, you can easily take a normal putty knife and fill in gaps with extra mud or sand down ridges. Thank you for showing your before pictures. Thanks in advance. You'll still need to take down the wallpaper, repair, then paint if that's the case. There is little smooth about them at all. Even the nicest paints will have trouble sticking to new mud. Thank you!! Wear a breathing mask and protective eyewear; and maybe a hat – dust will be everwhere. Hey there! UPDATE:  If you would like a helping hand with the dust, you can also purchase a drywall hand sander kit (most also come with a connection that allows for pole attachment). I’m putting them to use today. Sarah – GREAT tutorial! It is recommended to use a 1/2-inch-nap roller to roll mud in the area of about 4 ft. Square. We redid our kitchen, which had 30+ years of various layers of paint and wall paper. Join compound gets wet again pretty fast. Or maybe I need to throw more elbows around in the house? Yes, on fresh board, the sponge method works great, and I would still recommend it as a last step in drywall repair or if filling in a single hole on drywall. I have done a few smaller ones in the past but this one might be too big for me. While I have turned my skim coat into a post-workday evening project, it took several of those evenings to learn to get it right, to get a rhythm going, and to start seeing finished results. UPDATE:  I tried experimenting with paint and primer combo products, and to be honest, I hate most of them. Thank you for TOTALLY MAKING MY DAY with your comment :). Please ensure you are following proper guidelines with anything used, and seek professional advice if you don’t know how to do something! A contractor might give you a free quote if you would like to get their input on what you should do. Be sure to also read the follow-up post so you can get more details on things I’ve learned over the years (here). Are you using the “green” Sheetrock brand all-purpose joint compound thinned down and/or the lightweight “blue”? I’m going to try and skim the walls. I work 2 jobs so this has been a never ending few month job. We mix and as needed continue adding water. The purpose of wiping down a wall is to get it clean so that the paint can stick to it, because dust and/or dirt will create a bad bond between the paint and wall. Skim coat is a thin coat of joint compound also known as mud. You should definitely write the post because I feel like it would be so helpful! Got a DIY question? Right there with ya! My favorite things: 1) tearing my house apart and 2) putting it back together again. No, you don't have to take it down to make the change -- and giving it a new face may be easier than you think. Let the process begin! Wow! I'm so overwhelmed! You give such good lessons. Since no sizing was applied to the wallpaper before slapping it on, the builders of my beloved UDH made my job really hard. @[email protected] Right on! Eventually, it will need to be repainted anyway, and after a few coats of paint have hardened (they cure slowly), the walls will be as durable as any others. I recently brought a house and thought taking the wallpaper down was going to be a breeze. Good tip! This post may contain affiliate links. Skimming the rough or damaged surfaces with a coat of mud using a special squeegee knife leaves a smooth finish on the walls. Is there anything that can be done to make the walls smooth if paint was applied before skimming? Ha. Thanks. I am in the middle of redoing my grandmas bathroom and it has been a nightmare. Thank you for excellent advice, delightfully presented. Triple on those who texture over it. Typical pre mix: Green, Blue, Purple, Light Green (in order from hardest to sand to easiest) I am going to do your method lol i am hoping it will work out well for me lol i am a single female and have never attempted anything like this before lol wish me luck. It’s easy to think you’re adding enough and then be left with soup, which means adding more compound, more water, etc. Yeah, the most expensive part is the labor! I’ve been there. 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