The mudding corner trick that cost me a full Saturday

I tried to tape and mud the inside corners of my basement bathroom the way I saw on YouTube, but the paper tape kept peeling off. After fighting with it for like 5 hours and getting air bubbles everywhere, I finally figured out I needed to use a corner trowel and pre-wet the tape. Took me until 7pm to get two corners done right. Anyone else had this paper tape nightmare or is it just me?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_taylor4d ago

Oh man, "cursing at my bathroom ceiling corner" is too real. I tried that mesh tape once and it seemed to work okay for me, but then I got these little cracks showing up in the corners a few months later. My dad swears by pre-wetting the paper tape and using a real tight corner trowel, says that's the only way it'll hold in a bathroom with all the moisture. It is a pain in the neck to get right though. That pancake batter thickness tip is solid advice for sure.

the_piper4d ago

The one thing that saved me on my last drywall project was switching to the mesh tape for corners instead of paper. I did the same thing you did, spent like six hours on a Saturday cursing at my bathroom ceiling corner, and finally a guy at the hardware store told me to try the mesh stuff with a setting compound instead of the premixed. It sticks way better and you dont have to pre-wet anything, just push it in with the corner trowel and it holds. Another thing that helped was making sure my mud was a little thicker than pancake batter, not too runny or it just slides off and bubbles up.