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Skim Coat Drywall?

MikeHennessy | Posted in Construction Techniques on November 22, 2005 04:50am

I’m currently redoing my livingroom — I gutted it this past weekend — and I’m now considering my options for wall treatments. My experience with wall surfaces is either conventionally finished drywall or plaster. In this instance, I’d like to do something that is more durable than painted drywall (not enough resistance to gouges) but less hassle than a full plaster job, with a smooth finish. I’ve never done skimcoat over drywall. Is that an option? Does that yield a harder, more durable, surface and, if so, what do you use — compound, finish plaster or something else? Seems to be it would be almost impossible to get a smooth finish with compound and I’m not sure finish plaster would bond well with DW. Any thoughts?

Mike Hennessy

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  1. experienced | Nov 22, 2005 05:01pm | #1

    You can use veneer plaster over regular drywall but you must prime the surface with special product (forget the name; stuff I used to see was translucent pink when dried). The finish is much better than drywall and soaks up much less primer paint than the paper on drywall.

    Thing is though, I have watched the pros for hours at this (almost trance like) and I would not take it on myself. It's a real craft and art to get the shiny smooth finish!!

    1. davidmeiland | Nov 22, 2005 06:24pm | #3

      Diamond Finish plaster can be applied over drywall with the primer, as you say. It is incredibly easy to watch a skilled man trowel it out to a glassy finish, and incredibly hard to do yourself. I tried a closet once, and it came out OK but definitely not free of tool marks.

      From what I read about D Mix it wouldn't have any hardness advatange over normal drywall mud. It sounds like it's mostly about the consistency.

    2. stinger | Nov 23, 2005 06:15pm | #17

      Having suffered through the agonies of drywall finish in new construction a half dozen times, I am interested in hearing about the timing aspect of a veneer plaster job.

      My tapers just finished a reasonably complex job that used 225 4x12 boards, or about 10,000 sf of finished wall and ceiling.  Actually it was 6,700 net sf of wall and 3,000 net sf of ceiling.  Reasonably complex because of a whole lot of ceiling drops, soffit, and beam enclosures.  Quite a bit of corner work.  No curves.

      Suffering through the agonies means watching and waiting for beading, taping, first coat, second, third, sanding, touchup, more sanding, cleanup and dustdown, then priming.  Rock dust everywhere, mud everywhere, a whole lotta cleanup, and of course the wait between coats.  Finish crew size was 2 to 3 people.

      I would like for those experienced with veneer plaster work to chime in here an say how long a job like this might take, once the blueboard is hung.

      1. wivell | Nov 23, 2005 07:06pm | #21

        My house had about 9000 SF of blueboard - about 2500 SF of ceiling and 6500 SF of walls.  Large crew on the first day basically hung to whole job, glued and nailed.  Days 2 and 3 were plastering  - all smooth, no texture.  That's it, 3 days.

        I think I had maybe 3 nail pops in the whole place.  That was 8 years ago.  We were in a hurray to get in the place and didn't have time to paint the ceilings.  Still haven't to this day.  They're snow white and smooth.  I suppose I should paint them, but it's pretty low on the priority list.....

      2. Mooney | Nov 23, 2005 07:42pm | #23

        Now ,

        On a house with high ceilings automatic tools suffer . Say 10 feet and up. Stairways eat up a tremendous amount of time as do tray ceilings. Of course as always a lot of metal slows it down if they are in furn downs  and pans.

        Ill say a modern big home is much different in time and almost always results in large amounts of hand work. Its hard to charge enough for that type of work and I learned to avoid it . Mostly commercial is better with tools and more forgiving.

        I would be interrested in plaster times too. MIke Smith is who Im thinking about that lives in plaster land. He doesnt do it but hires it out all the time.

        Tim

         

        Edited 11/23/2005 11:44 am by Mooney

      3. experienced | Nov 26, 2005 05:29pm | #30

        In my area, it was always done with the larger, more complex houses as the little guy was trying to save the 10+ cents. So it's hard for a direct comparison with simple spec houses. I feel that timewise when you include the dust cleaning from walls before painting DW that it's about the same or not much more.

  2. [email protected] | Nov 22, 2005 05:23pm | #2

    Do a search on this site for Dmix.

  3. BryanSayer | Nov 22, 2005 06:53pm | #4

    I'm doing some plaster repairs now, and from what I have learned the Diamond plaster is the hardest. Rather than use drywall though, why not use something designed to accept the plaster, like blue board? Then you won't have to use the additive.

  4. jeffwoodwork | Nov 22, 2005 07:05pm | #5

    If your doing plaster Blueboard seems the right way to go I did that to a remodel in my house which is plaster.  I don't know price difference of BB and regular rock with a latex prime they can't be too far apart.  The plaster I did was smooth wall with a vertical broomed finish even that was tough to do.  I like plaster walls too for the ability to take a beating and hold up.

    Jeff

  5. experienced | Nov 22, 2005 07:33pm | #6

    Read the first of your post but it didn't sink in. I thought you wanted to plaster over existing drywall. By all means, use the blue board since it's designed for veneer plaster. The finish with the Diamond product is much harder than a drywall joint compound.

    1. MikeHennessy | Nov 22, 2005 10:01pm | #7

      Thanks for all the responses. I've used blue board as a base for traditional 2- or 3-coat plaster applications (scratch/brown & finish). Do I understand correctly that I can use blue board, skip the base coat and put the finish coat on the board directly? Yeah, I know it's quite an art to get the finish smooth, but I can do this fairly well in traditional applications (although no where near as fast as a plaster guy), so I don't think a skim application would be that much different, would it? I haven't seen specs on this sort of thing on the manufacturers' sites, so I'm kind of in the dark. Anyone know of any literature on the procedures? (A quick search on Diamond finish plaster yields a ton of sites about adobe and traditional 2- or 3-coat applications, but I didn't see anything on skim-coating DW).

      Mike Hennessy

       

      1. davidmeiland | Nov 22, 2005 10:18pm | #8

        Yes, Diamond Finish over blue(grey)board with no primer, no base coat, just one veneer coat maybe 3/32-1/8" thick. The USG site has excellent tech info on their products.

        1. stinger | Nov 23, 2005 02:10am | #9

          I was gonna say the same thing.  The USG site is a wealth of info.

          There are small pockets of the country, one is eastern CT and RI, where a blueboard and veneer plaster job is priced so close to a gyprock-tape-mud job that hardly anyone does rock.

          The beauty of the blueboard and veneer plaster job is that it is over in nothing flat, with little cleanup, and you get those steel-trowel-smooth walls.  Contrast that with the time, mud, dust, and waviness of a taped rock job.

          I'm dreaming.

          1. davidmeiland | Nov 23, 2005 03:12am | #10

            Lemme guess, no plasterers in Lake Placid. I recently heard there's one here, I need to hunt him down.

            I had a lot of plaster done in CA. I used to figure it cost about 1/3 more than a level 4 smoothwall, but like you say the lack of sanding and the one-day action were too good to pass up. Here I have a rocker who is extremely good with his knife and with using a wet sponge instead of sanding, which makes patching in occupied spaces very palatable.

            I have a friend in the Salt Lake area who is very established as a decorative plasterer. He does all sorts of faux moldings and colors. He can 'trim out' an entire house using nothing but foam backer and plaster over it. Big fireplaces and mantels, arches, the works. That look is big there and he has more work than he can do. Started out as a rocker.

            It'd be interesting to know whether skimcoat plaster takes a good man 1/3 more time or not.

          2. Mooney | Nov 23, 2005 05:49pm | #16

            "It'd be interesting to know whether skimcoat plaster takes a good man 1/3 more time or not."

            Ive never worked with plaster but Ive seen it done on tv which is certainly no qualifier , but it sure looked slow.

            I have ran advanced taping crews with automated equipment . If thats what you are referring to is drywall finishing compared.

            A taping crew like that would blow them away but quick. Im thinking more like 4 times at least. I dont have a clue why the prices are so close as some talk about unless they are not comapring advanced crews.

            Weve done this on apartments several times;

            2- 18 wheeler loads which is 1104 sheets , 4x12s . Not that many really. Takes a crew of 4 with a trailer load of equipment 6 to 8 days to walk through it . I never got that in 5 days but tried like heck. 8 days is pretty ho hum . At any rate I dont believe there ever was a man born that could plaster that much in that given time .

            Tim

             

          3. experienced | Nov 23, 2005 05:52am | #11

            As you say, there are pockets of veneer plaster. I used to live near Moncton, New Brunswick. The Acadian French population is about 50% in that locale. They have a connection to the Boston area and brought the plaster technique back with them in the 1960-70-80's. I had some work done on my old farmhouse by an old pro in the mid 80's -smooth as a sheet of glass. And it was only 10 cents more per sq ft!! Like you say why think of gyproc? You'd save the 10 extra cents in primer paint as it doesn't suckm it up like the drywall paper and mud joints.

            I live outside Halifax, Nova Scotia now, a much larger city than Moncton.  Rarely hear of veneer plaster and it's about 2x drywall cost. 

          4. User avater
            Taylor | Nov 23, 2005 02:31pm | #12

            If Ireland is representative of the rest of Europe.....people couldn't believe when I told them they painted right over DW in US.....MIL from NE also, when she moved south (to Maryland from Mass) the paint-over-DW thing was quite a culture shock....Here in Joisey I'm told plaster is four (4) times the price of rock+paint....So I hear everybody saying that plaster is a skill mastered only by the true priests of the inner circle and I'm willing to believe this....Is there an intermediate level that the lay people could aspire to, not necessarily level 5 but good enough and you've got plaster walls? I've thought of asking one of the vanishing old pros around here for some lessons (for $$$ obviously)....And is there any way to edumucate oneself on this? The Taunton Ferguson book talks strictly about DW, nothing about plaster.....

          5. MikeHennessy | Nov 23, 2005 04:17pm | #13

            Thanks, guys. I'll look again at the USG site. At this point, I'm leaning towards hiring a semi-retired plaster guy, who only does small jobs now, to spend a day with me and get me going in generally the right direction. ALways lookin' for an excuse to get a new tool or new skill! ;-)

            Mike Hennessy

          6. splat | Nov 23, 2005 06:44pm | #19

            Here's a site to check, http://www.plasterzone.com/index.php

            This guy sells plaster kits, has a variety of training info, and does one-on-one training as well.  He seems very much targeted at building the plaster trade.  He also writes a column on the plaster trade for walls and ceilings magazine.

            As mentioned, in RI the cost of veneer is competitive with drywall.  So it can't take that much longer to do since labor costs dominate the finishing.  Skilled crews can flip through rooms fast, like a herd of spider monkeys.

            I have been curious about the dmix hardness.  Does it compare at all to plaster?

            eric

          7. User avater
            PaulBinCT | Nov 23, 2005 06:57pm | #20

            I'm farrrrrrr from a Dmix expert, but Dino gave me a demo on a job I was doing as well as doing a bit myself.  It's certainly much harder than regular DW mud, but I'd say not quite as hard as plaster.  Still seems to me to be a relatively easy to learn, durable finish... Dino's a pretty regular poster here, maybe he'll chime in, but in the meantime there are a number of threads here with people's experience, almost all quite good IIRC.

          8. User avater
            Taylor | Nov 23, 2005 11:24pm | #26

            I would guess that the hardness of Dmix is from the Plaster of Paris (though I thought that was just to control the setting time of the compound). Still it's bound to be much easier than plastering if you're using a paint roller!I do wonder though if durability is its Achilles heel over plaster, ow who would ever again plaster?Would it be pointless to put up blueboard before doing Dmix?

          9. dinothecarpenter | Nov 24, 2005 06:37am | #27

            Taylor.

            The D-mix goes over anything. Old paint,new drywall, wood panel, brick, but not

            as good on the blueboard. it dries too fast and slows you down.

            I use it over blueboad, but with one guy on the roller and two guys on the trowels.

            YCf D

          10. User avater
            PeteDraganic | Nov 24, 2005 05:02pm | #28

            Now I'm wondering if there is a way to harden regular joint compound after it dries... like by adding a coat of paint that will soak in and create a "crust" of sorts.

            The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. -Albert Einstein

            http://www.peteforgovernor.com

          11. dinothecarpenter | Nov 24, 2005 05:17pm | #29

            Hi Pete.

            The hardness of the d-mix was never a problem.

            If you're going to scratch the wall, you can do it even with  real plaster.

            They do have strong paints to resist scratching, but no need for it.

            YCF D 

             

          12. experienced | Nov 23, 2005 04:22pm | #14

            You might be able to do it fairly well by taking on smaller areas than a pro would such as 8x10-15' sections. You may have to sand a bit at the end. Like I said earlier, such a fine craft, i would watch these guys for 15-30 minutes at a time when I encountered them as subs on jobs Isubbed on also. The help that mixed the plaster for them might get to try their hand after 3-5 years. The son of one plasterer I knew only wanted to install the blueboard and drywall for jobs (companies here usually offered both products)

            This is something you'll not learn from a book. I'd look for a video or try find a job site to visit. Sorry I don't have more info. Contact the suppliers.

          13. davidmeiland | Nov 23, 2005 05:48pm | #15

            I learned a fair amount from watching. I had my plasterer redo about 80% of the interior of my last house. A lot of new blueboard and a lot of patching and skimming existing walls and ceilings. There is a significant timing aspect to it, meaning they would start to work everything flat just as the plaster kicked. They could tell by what it felt like under the trowel that it was time to start erasing the tool marks. They looked very casual all day but the job had a rhythm.

            If you want to try it, get a closet or something to start with. Or better yet, stick some scraps of blueboard up inside the garage and make some samples, 4x4 or so.

  6. jackplane | Nov 23, 2005 06:30pm | #18

    skip the rock/plaster.

     p. lam over sheetrock, trim with a router,hang in uniform vertical sheets with a french cleat. Apply trim over joints if desired.

    this is durable.

     

  7. Brudoggie | Nov 23, 2005 07:21pm | #22

    Mike,
    I just skim coated a bath room with joint compound. We're fixing up a home for an estate sale. The whole house is tobacco smoke damaged. So it needs to be primed with Kilz, to eliminate the odors. The bath had wall paper above a 4' tile wall. After pulling the paper, we found the remains of an old paper job. It was patchy, some areas completely gone some not. Rather than try to remove the rest, we scrapped any loose areas, then skim coated it. Turned out great. Although, probably a softer finish than you are looking for.

    In terms of learning to plaster. You may be wise to try a skim with drywall mud first. It is much more forgiving, if you goof up. It's a good way to get the technique down.

    Good luck!
    Brudoggie

  8. Rav | Nov 23, 2005 08:21pm | #24

    I had posted a similar question many months ago. At the time Fine Homebuilding had just released a very informative digital video of the process and had posted it to their web site.
    Do a search here and at finehomebuilding to locate the video clip
    r2

  9. MJLonigro | Nov 23, 2005 10:01pm | #25

    We do full skim walls in commercial buildings as a standard. The walls are regular 5/8" Gyp Board with a full skim coat of compound. The finish is smooth and durable. I believe USG even makes a compound that can be sprayed on for a full skim application.

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