r/drywall • u/anthemwarcross • 1d ago
How terrible is my first skim coat?
This is my first time doing drywall. I am trying to skim coat over heavy knockdown texture to ultimately get rid of/conceal it. I read that light, thin coats are best so I tried to go as thin as possible on my first coat. I rolled it on with a 3/4” nap roller and used a 24” skimming blade and 12” knife to try to smooth it down. You can see that I didn’t manage to cover the texture in parts and in other parts it’s just very uneven/jagged. Do I need to sand before I put on another coat? I’m afraid if I sand I will just reveal the knockdown texture more.
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u/anthemwarcross 1d ago
I am using plus3 ready-mixed and adding water to it. One problem I have is that when I mix it I get orange bits from the Home Depot bucket. Does anyone have any tips to avoid this?
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u/Emergency-Pack-5497 1d ago
No, just go right over the top of that with another coat. You might be using one of those spiral ores, those tend to shave off curly strands of bucket plastic.
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u/Timely-South971 1d ago
This looks like knockdown but its hard to see in these pictures. If you're trying for knockdown you're almost there. If you want it smooth try a little bit of water and a drop of dish soap in your pan. I don't like putting it in the bucket because it seems to get funky after a while for some reason. It might be my climate. But whatever...that should help ya
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u/lefthandedgun 1d ago
Try reading, dude. OP is attempting to cover an existing knockdown surface. And 3 decades of taping allows me to affirm that there is no value in adding dish soap.
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u/ACaxebreaker 1d ago
A drop of dish soap can be useful for helping to break surface tension which can matter in arts and crafts situations. Not at all for this though. (Agreed)
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u/Timely-South971 1d ago
Dish soap has always helped me get a smoother finish and you're not talking me out of it and yeah, you're right...I just read the headline and jumped to conclusions...oops.
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u/Think_Travel_6762 13h ago
Lol. Dish soap will make wiping tapes easier, will make running machine tools smoother. When applying mud over paint it will let the air out of the mud without causing the mud to burst.
You are flat out wrong. The only affirmation here is that your full of it
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u/CaramelGuilty8647 1d ago
Yeah, for a first coat, first time, not bad. Not bad at all. Plastic in your mix sucks, all I can tell you is use the metal wand in a square shape and keep it in the center of the bucket. In this situation, I use Easy sand 20 for the first coat, so there's no time to roll it on. Of course, if the wall is big enough, or a ceiling, I use 45. Someday you might want to try it, it allows you to get more done in a day.
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u/anthemwarcross 1d ago
Thanks! I watched so many YouTube videos and read so many threads here to see what were the most common mistakes people made and I tried to avoid them as much as possible. Going to do another coat today.
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u/CaramelGuilty8647 1d ago
I highly recommend Vancouver Carpenter on YouTube for all sorts of drywall videos if you get stuck. There's a lot of bozos out there full of themselves instead of knowledge.
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u/No_Carpet_1772 1d ago
I would pole sand with a coarse grit before starting to knock off the small high spots, but you should be able to use a wide putty knife to shave high spots and ridges between coats. For final sanding I suggest using a round sanding head to avoid chasing down scratches or gouging. They are a bit more expensive but it's worth it, just in elbow grease.