How do you cover up drywall mistakes?
Question:Against my better judgement, I allowed my husband to drywall our basement himself. Now there are huge spots where it is very uneven. I spent hours spackling, sanding and trying to even it out, which helped a lot, but there are some areas which just can't be fixed. The only thing to do now is try to cover it up, so I'm looking for suggestions. Is there some kind of paint or painting technique that could help?
Answers:
While it is possible to float out the drywall to make the high spots less noticable, it is pretty much impossible to "fix" a really bad drywall job.
The only real solutions are as follows: 1. tear it off and start again. 2. Re-hang new drywall over top the old and tape it again.
Ok there are several things I can think of. You weren't very specific on exactly what has happened. But a larger drywall knife can help you FLOAT out the uneven spots, this does take a while so build it up on the low side and float i out over 2' from high side to low side. You could strategically put shelves in front of these spots(easiest) or hang pictures. Everybody thinks drywall mudding is easy, so remember in the future less is more, meaning you build it up slowly keeping the seam as flat as possible and reduces the amount of sanding having to be done. You could also build out in these spots. Hey maybe take an informative class at Lowe's or Home Depot about drywall. Or as always hire the PROFESSIONAL.
well it's obviously not textured yet so you may want to consider a heavy texture pattern such as splatter drag.
Was the existing wall level when he put the drywall on?
The drywall warped?
My suggestion would be to rip the sheets back off the offending areas and grind down (depending on what it was) the bumps and/or hang new Straight sheets.
Good luck with it!
RT
Fabric backed vinyl textured wallpaper will cover a multitude of sins. And, if you want to change it in years to come, just pull it off and put up a new color, pattern, texture. Also, if the wall gets damaged, it's easily repaired with some leftover wallpaper. You can't repair or change it easily if you put on a permanent texture.
Most of the previous answers work. Splatter drag refers to a technique where material is literally thrown at a surface in a semi random fashion and the leveled somewhat by dragging a trowel over the surface.
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