Taping, Mudding & Finishing · Cambridge

Drywall Taping, Mudding and Finishing in Cambridge

Board is a day. Finishing is the week of drying, sanding and checking under a low light, and it is the only part of the job anyone will see.

We finish board we have hung and board others have hung — a homeowner who boarded a Hespeler basement and stopped at the taping, a general contractor who wants a finisher, an owner of an old Preston house whose walls have been patched past the point where another patch helps. The first question is what level of finish the room actually needs, because the answer is not the same everywhere.

Levels of finish

• Level 4 — joints taped and covered with three coats, fasteners and corner bead covered, sanded smooth. The right finish for flat or eggshell paint under ordinary light, which is most rooms, and what most quotes assume.
• Level 5 — Level 4 plus a thin skim over the whole surface so paper and joints take paint identically. Specified where light rakes across a wall from a large window or a run of pot lights, where the paint is dark, semi-gloss or gloss, and on ceilings under low-angle light. Without it the joints show as faint bands.
• Lower levels behind tile, in a garage or utility room, where paying for Level 5 is waste and we will say so.

Finishing against old work

In a century home the new board rarely stands alone; it meets plaster at a doorway, an overlay meets the original wall at a corner, or a new partition meets a wall that is a century out of plumb. Those junctions are where the finish is judged. The usual answer is to skim the adjoining plaster so the two surfaces read as one, or to detail the junction honestly with a bead or a trim line where the planes genuinely differ. Running a feathered joint across a change of plane produces a wave that every raking light will find.

Skim coats over old walls

A plaster wall that is sound but scarred — decades of patches, the ghosts of wallpaper, sanding marks, a texture nobody wants — is often best skimmed as a whole to Level 5 rather than patched again or overlaid. It keeps the plaster, keeps the trim exactly where it is, and produces a wall that presents as new. Where the old surface includes compound or texture from the 1950s to late 1980s, a lab test comes before any sanding.

What good finishing looks like while it is happening

• Tape bedded wet, with no dry spots behind it. Dry-bedded tape lifts and bubbles later and is the cause of most of the tape repairs we are called to.
• Corner bead set straight and checked with a level, because a wandering outside corner is visible from the doorway forever.
• Each coat fully dry before the next. Heat and air movement help; rushing does not. Old houses with cool, damp rooms dry slower and the schedule allows for it.
• Dust controlled — sanders on a vacuum, doorways sealed, returns covered, and the original floors protected in a house where they are worth protecting.
• Checked under a work light held low against the surface, which shows what the paint will show.

Painting is separate. A sanded, primed surface at the agreed level is the hand-off.

Frequently asked questions

Serving Cambridge and surrounding areas. Contact us for a no-obligation quote specific to your property.