Hot mud!

Okay. So I got talked into mudding and taping the new drywall in the upstairs bath, such that it could be painted and look cozy and stuff. Have I mentioned I’m not very fond of mudding and taping?

With the possible exception of a few comical moments where the floor received more mud than the walls, this mudding job has actually gone pretty smoothly. Thus far I’ve put on two coats of mud, and the tape. Tonight I sanded for the first time and it looks pretty good. I’m thinking I’ll have one more topping coat, and one more sanding.

This time around I took my dad’s advice and tried using “hot mud”, which is compound that stiffens quickly because it has a chemical drying agent in it. Previously I’d only ever used pre-mixed compound out of a bucket or bag. The hot mud comes in bags of powder that needs to be mixed with water in a bucket. For this purpose I spent $12 and bought a mixing paddle for my drill. My only advice here is don’t let the mixing paddle touch the side wall of the bucket while it’s turning – the blade will cut the plastic and put little plastic shards in your mud. That will only become problematic as you try to lay the mud nice and smooth on the wall.

The powder can be bought in different formulas with different drying times. I bought the longest drying time (90 minutes), but you can also get 45 or 30 minutes. In reality I think the numbers 90, 45, and 30 aren’t actually representative of minutes; my 90 actually takes about 3 hours before it can be sanded. Still an improvement over the not-so-hot variety.

I still plan to hire out the mudding/taping of our slightly larger project, downstairs…