The Intricacies of Mud

I neglected to post this as my first project, although in truth, it was. I think I rejected it at first because it turned out so poorly, but I’ve since decided that it was part of the adventure of homeownership, for better or worse, and should be included.

Also, it does actually take place in the master bedroom, which I covered yesterday. The closet in that room was in pretty bad shape when we bought the house. The plaster on the ceiling and some of the walls was coming off in chunks, and hadn’t been repaired. This is important because it was truly the absolute first thing that I faced. Having no experience, the first thing that popped into my mind was Spackle.


I headed to Google, talked to some friends/co-workers, and chatted with a couple employees at the local Menards. Turns out that I really SHOULD be replacing the wall, or at least part of it; when the damage is this bad, it’s not recommended to patch plaster walls with drywall mud. But… I had no clue how to do that, so drywall mud it was.

I kind of assumed that the prep process would be similar to painting: I scraped away the larger pieces, sanded the rest, and wiped it all down. I then began to cake on the mud. It took quite a while; I found that the mud would frequently bubble as I ran the joint knife over it, or end up not really sitting how I wanted it. Eventually, I got it to look decent, and let it dry.

Unfortunately, I neglected to mud the smaller, less damaged areas. I figured I could sand and paint those, but was quickly proven wrong. After the mud dried, I sanded it down, and tried to sand the smaller areas down, as well. As you can see in the pictures, this clearly didn’t work. It’s still pretty visible through the sand texture paint.

One of the reoccurring lessons here is that the preparation stage is VERY important… oh well.