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Showerthought: I was wasting so much time on my inside corners
For years, I was taught to prefill my inside corners with mud and let it dry before taping. Did it on a big apartment job in Tempe last month, and the foreman just looked at me and said, 'Why are you making extra work? The tape IS the filler.' He showed me his method: just a thin coat of mud in the corner, bed the tape, and smooth it out. No prefilling, no extra dry time. I tried it on the next unit and cut my corner time by at least 30%. It sounds small, but over a whole house, that's hours saved. The joint is just as strong and way faster. I feel like an idiot for not seeing it sooner. Anyone else have a 'wow, I was overcomplicating that' moment with a basic task?
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terry_bailey353mo ago
Right? Same thing with cutting in paint.
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amy_foster562mo ago
Ngl, I gotta disagree with this one. Thick coats on paint can actually save you time if you know what you're doing. The trick is getting the right amount of paint on the brush and not overloading it to the point of drips. Two thin coats just means twice the drying time and twice the brush cleaning, which honestly sucks when you're trying to knock out a room in a day.
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smith.jordan3mo ago
Honestly, that exact thing happened to me with floating drywall seams. I used to build up these huge, wide coats trying to get it perfect in one go. Tbh, watching an old timer just lay down two thin, tight coats with a long knife blew my mind. The finish was smoother and it dried so much faster. Felt like I'd been doing it the hard way for no reason.
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