What Drywall Repair Materials And Tools Are The Best, Written by a drywall repair professional.Which materials and tools to use and why. The products that have a 25 year proven track record of working.
Over the course of my career I was a new home drywall finisher and hanger for the first 8 years. I was a finishing foreman for a commercial drywall company for 2 years. Since 2001 and full time since 2010 I have owned and operated MrWalls. We are focused on repair and renovation ceiling and wall work, Insurance water damage restoration, and popcorn ceiling removal and repairs.
There are many brands of drywall tools and materials out there and i have tried them all. When you do something everyday for many years you fine tune your selection to the products that prove themselves time and time again to never fail. The ones you see that always produce the best looking drywall work, and never crack. Because drywall materials are rather inexpensive but the job is very labor intensive there is no room for "might work". I don't want to have to drag scaffolding into someones foyer and re-tape a seam because the product I used failed. I need my products to work 100% of the time or they are gone.
First the tapes I will not use because they have failed me. 1. Regular fiberglass mesh tape is ok if used with setting compound on the first coat but still can hairline crack in a very small percentage of the time. I have fixed jobs done by other contractors where they used ready mix with mesh tape and the entire house had cracks everywhere. Never use it with ready mixed.
Use: I prefer paper tape on new homes and large installation jobs. Paper tape has a long learning curve and is not best for diy. I use fibafuse max on repairs and smaller jobs. Its thin and super strong and becomes one with the compound. I suggest it for diy drywall work. When resurfacing large areas of plaster i use fibafuse 36" wide roll to cover the whole wall.
Don't Use: The old style vinyl straight flex without paper backing pops off the drywall. The paper tape with metal bands running along the corner is hard to make a straight line and i have seen it pop in the middle where the metal band is.
Use: The new straight flex with paper backing it bonds much better. No-coat products are my go to I have never seen them fail. I like no-coat 325 for inside corners and the no-coat 450 for outside corners over 90 degrees.
I Like Green pail USG compound to embed tape. For coating and skim coating I use USG lime green lid ultralight or blue lid lightweight plus 3. I use USG Durabond and USG Sandable 20 minute setting compound for times when I need to put more than one coat on in a day. National Gypsum is also good but my supplier stocks USG products.
I stick to no-coat outside corner beads. They never get edge cracks and can take alot of abuse without denting. Metal cornerbead is OK, but you should tape the metal flanges to prevent edge cracking if the corner gets bumped. Vinyl cornerbead is hard to work with and requires adhesive plus staples to install.
I like USG lightweight drywall it is the best quality. National gypsum is a close second plus it has marks on the drywall paper to help line up screws. Avoid Tuff rock boards they are brittle and the core seems to have air-pockets throughout which make it break too easy.
For water stains, tannin stains any oil based primer is required to stop them from bleeding through the finish paint. For latex I use the new kilz original latex.
Full Circle International makes a kit that hooks to a hepa vac. that is the one I use for my repair work. If sanding a whole house I have a 9" power sander i like festool and dewalt power sanders.
Trowels have a much longer learning curve. For diy work i would use a 4", 6", 8", 10" pan knife and a mud pan. I was taught to finish with a trowel and a 6" knife working straight from the bucket, but I use pan knives for most of my work today. I still skim coat with a 14" flat trowel.