Mudding Our Drywall in the Bathroom for the First Time

Mudding our drywall in the bathroom for the first time as a DIY project was quite the tedious job yet an opportunity to learn new skills.

We really wanted to get going on the bathroom because as you may have seen from our prior blogs and videos, we were having a bit of bathing challenges. We were using a kiddie pool to take our baths or our showers!

MUDDING DRYWALL IN BATHROOM

It was time to have a real bathroom set up because we were looking forward to having running water in there. I want to say at that point in our journey it may have been about six months since we had a real shower in our last apartment!

Since the drywall was already put up in the bathroom. The next step was that we would need to mud, sand, and then prime it. This was quite a job and it took a lot of time and was very tedious. It was basically another one of those dirty jobs! Just a reoccurring theme around here.

MORE TO JUST HANGING DRYWALL

I never really realized how involved drywall would be. I don’t know if you have tackled your own drywall projects at home and would agree. Whenever I thought of drywall, I thought you just put it up and then it becomes your wall and you paint it.

LESSONS TO WORKING ON DRYWALL

The lesson I learned throughout this project is that there is a lot more to drywall than just hanging it up. There are those cracks in between the different sheets of drywall. You’re not usually going to have only one sheet of drywall that covers the entire wall.

When you section off the drywall there’s going to be cracks where the two pieces of drywall are hung next to each other. So then Nate would tape those cracks, then mud it several times with this like putty clay looking substance. He would eventually need to sand it and then prime it so that we could finally have real walls.

Another lesson I learned is that you wouldn’t mud the entire wall! I must have thought mudding involved the entire drywall sheet and it does not. Nate explained to me that you tape the drywall cracks first and then go over the tape with two different coats of mud. Then you sand it, prime it, and finally get to paint it. I never realized how many steps drywall would actually take. Nate did a bit of drywall work in the past, but it had been a long time since then so he was brushing up on his skills and knowledge of the craft.

I was really looking forward to having real walls in the house. It was crazy how we had been living for so long. In a literal construction zone!

Mudding our drywall in the bathroom for the first time gave us the confidence to complete the same task throughout the rest of our little pine cottage!

DRYWALL MUDDING A TEDIOUS TASK

It was amazing how much Nate was getting done with all the taping and mudding. Such a long and tedious job! I was thinking this would be good practice for the rest of the house as he gets faster at it as well. Nate was just hoping it would all turn out good as he is no expert at this and just tackling it on his own as a DIY project. I had to remind him that he usually works on these projects better and more thoroughly than contractors and at times has to go over or fix poor work done by them.

DRYWALL MUDDING – SPOTTING NAILS

Then Nate was spotting nails and was working on several coats of it. Again, such a tedious process. Wow, he would definitely be getting some strong arms out of all this work. Reminded me of when Mr. Miyagi was training the Karate Kid! Wax on, wax off. And in unison Nate and I said, wipe down, wipe off! Well, I said wipe up while he said wipe off. Such a funny and nostalgic comparison. A nice little trip down childhood memories and references.

The nails that he was spotting would need to be mudded about three times or so. Wow! With this much detail, I’m sure of it now that Nate would probably be the best at getting the job done thoroughly compared to a contractor! When will we ever get to the sanding and priming step? May be a while at this pace. All for detail and getting things done right as much as possible.

Nate forgot how much went into drywall. As a kid he would go to work with his dad, who was a drywaller, and spot nails all day and helped with the taping. And you really don’t have to spot nails around windows and doors as the trim would end up covering it up anyway.

DRYWALL MUDDING – MORE TASKS THAT GET TRICKY

Now after all this mudding, he would then have to sand it lightly and hit it with a few more coats of mud! Talk about an endless project. If you’re into that, then try your own DIY drywall projects around the house. Go bust up a wall if you need to just to experience this never-ending bliss we were able to! {Chuckle. Chuckle.}

The corner angles seemed to be a bit more tricky especially when trying to smooth it out. He will have a lot of sanding to do to make it just right. Since he’s not a professional, it was a bit more challenging as he doesn’t work on this all the time.

The mud looked like clay and perhaps the humor in all this is if we looked at it like accomplishing an art project!

Mudding our drywall in the bathroom for the first time was a rewarding experience as we got closer to our goal of having a functional room to clean up in!

Proverbs 24:3

Through wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established.

CHECK OUT OUR VIDEOS

Thanks for joining us on this journey! We hope that you will find inspiration watching us learn as we go while we’re attempting to renovate and rebuild this old small historic cottage mostly on our own. Stay tuned for more progress updates ahead!

You can also watch a video about this here.