# Skip Trowel Texture



## redmanblackdog (Jan 7, 2011)

Without pictures or being there myself, I can only guess what you really have. All journeymen have there own little tricks, and likes and dislikes(thousand ways to skin a cat). Myself I usually use mud straight out of the box, no mixing. They make mud looser now than they did 20 years ago. They must have realized that water is cheaper than material, kind of like processed ham. However if you get an older box of mud, sometimes the extended shell life will dry the mud a little so on occasions you may need to mix water with it. If you can, use 80 grit sand paper and try to sand through the paint to the existing texture and sand the texture down at least 12"s from the patch. But be carefull not to over sand and get into the face paper of the drywall. It doesn't have to be perfect but you want to minimize the build up of mud if you can. However heavier textures do hide a lot more of the inconsistencies. Once you have that prepped then you prefill any larger cracks, and put the tape to it. You then need to put a couple of coats of mud on each side of the tape to help hide the hump the tape will usually cause. I use an 8" knife on the second coat and a 12" on the finish coat, always trying to feather the edge. Sand it down and touch it up, and start trying to match the texture. The good thing here is that if you don't like what you've done you just scrap it back off before it drys and try again. I usually use all purpose (beadex) when I do hand texturing. Drywall mud is water soluable, so once you have finished texturing and it has dried, you can take a wet rag and wipe off any texture that might not be in the location that you want it(like new texture laying on the old texture, if it does not look right. A wet rag can also wipe out any heavy edges or ridges caused by trying to work the mud in the existing textured areas. Good luck, have some fun.


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