# Re-doing Spackle



## bjbatlanta (Jul 16, 2008)

Kind of hard to say without seeing what you've got....... How severe is the blistered tape?? If it's just a few spots, you can cut out the bad places, re-tape and mud. Can you post a picture or two?? As far as the edges, you just need to sand/scrape as best you can (not easy with a painted surface) and a "tight" skim or two. Then sand and paint. If the entire length of tape is blistered, you need to pull the whole piece out (along with the mud on top of it) and re-tape. The problem with your "gouging" idea is that when you put the mesh tape on top of what's there and add a couple of coats of mud, your joints are just going to bulge out and be more noticeable. You can't just keep piling mud on. And I hope you actually used joint compound for your finishing and not true spackling compound. It's meant for minor nick and gouge repairs, not finishing joints. Best of luck.


----------



## Termite (Apr 13, 2008)

All good advice from BJBatlanta. Many thousands of DIYers have boogered sheetrock jobs. 

I'm one of those guys that will avoid paying someone else to anything....I'm a jack of all trades type. But, I will not do my own mudding and taping. _It is truly and art_, and doing it right is something that is often best left to professionals.


----------



## Nestor_Kelebay (Jun 17, 2008)

How you fix it depends on how bad it is.

From the mental picture I have in my head of what you have on your walls, based on your description, here's what I'd do:

1. Set up a bright light against the walls and shining on the walls to exagerate the roughness of what you have.

2. Scrape the drywall joints down with a paint scraper, preferably the kind with the tungsten carbide blade because it is sharp enough to scrape paint and joint compound off of drywall paper without cutting into the drywall paper unintentionally.

3. Apply fiberglass mesh drywall tape over your scraped down joints.

4. If it wuz me, I would paint that drywall mesh tape with white wood glue diluted with enough water to make it into a paintable consistancy. The fiberglass mesh is self adhesive, but the wood glue will bond the mesh to the joint compound much stronger as it dries up.

5. Now, use something called a "curved trowel" to apply a very shallow mound of joint compound over your fiberglass mesh. A curved trowel looks just like an ordinary plastering trowel until you set it down on a flat surface and notice that the blade of the trowel is curved so that it arches up about 1/8 inch in the middle. Since you hold the trowel at a comfortable angle to the wall when spreadying joint compound with it, it allows you to spread a perfectly uniform "mound" of joint compound over your fiberglass mesh tape that will typically be about 1/16 of an inch thick at it's middle, and taper down to zero thickness on each side. That 1/16 of an inch is more than enough to bury fiberglass mesh tape, but not enough by a long shot to show as a "bump" on the wall, even with wall mounted light fixtures.

You can buy curved trowels at any drywall wholesaler, but apparantly the home centers have started to carry them as well. Sight along the edge of the trowel to see if it's a straight or curved trowel. Without doing that, the two kinds of trowel are nearly indistinguishable.

6. After allowing the mound of joint compund to dry, srape off any ridges or bumps with a paint scraper, and apply another coat of joint compound with a straight trowel, this time going perpendicular to the mound of joint compound to fill in any roughness in the joint compound with more joint compound. Don't be scared to thin your joint compound with water , and you use a spray bottle to mist the surface of the wet joint compound with water to make the joint compound easier to spread to a very smooth surface.

Use a paint scraper to scrape any roughness down and apply more coats of plaster to where you need to to get a smooth surface and scrape or sand them down until the joint compound is looking pretty smooth.

Once the repaired joints look acceptable under the critical lighting shining on the wall, then it'll look perfect under normal lighting.

Prime and paint.


----------



## AtlanticWBConst. (May 12, 2006)

My advice, 

If it driving you that nuts, consider highering a professional drywall taper to come in and re-coat it all for you. 
They will be able to get it nice and smooth. 

Over the years, we have had many phone calls with clients (home owners) just like you, that have asked us to come in and and fix, some of the most hideous attempts at taping and coating. 
Some I have cringed at, and thought we'd never get to look right...but we always have been able to bring the surfaces back to "life"...and get them nice and smooth, by sanding and properly re-coating (smooth wide coats).


----------

