Friday, August 1, 2008

Help! Joint compound gone wrong

I admit it. I don't really know what I'm doing. I'm trying to repair some fairly large holes in our plaster in the kitchen. When I did it upstairs under the window, it worked fine to just use some drywall tape and joint compound and it painted up nicely. These holes, however, are a big wider/longer and when I tape over them, I'm having to use several pieces of tape to cover the hole. When I mudded over them last night the finished product today looks like this:

I'm at a loss as to what to do now. Do I try to scrape this all off and start over? Do I just retape over it and start again? I know that this patching job isn't the absolutely correct way but the holes are all above the cabinets so they're not anywhere that anyone will be able to see closely or well. Any ideas, House Gurus?

3 comments:

Omar said...

How big a hole are we talking about here? You may want to consider chipping that all out and patching with a piece of drywall, then skimcoating..

sarah said...

Yeah, Omar's probably right - might be best to cut it out & drywall patch at this point. But since it's above the cabinets, if it's not sticking out too incredibly far, you could skim a little at a time till you have an almost imperceptible bump there. We usually end up doing the JC over several days if it needs to be any thicker than just a skim.
By the way, I usually mess my patches up by leaning on them and getting an ass-print in the wall - I've done that TWICE! Duh! Ken is much better than me at that job since I lack the patience!

Why S? said...

I can't help you but don't you think the picture looks like a pair of ghostly lips emerging from the wall? Eerie.