Taping Some Wall Joints

To run the wiring for the dishwasher, I had to cut a piece of sheetrock out of the wall below the breaker box. I did this to get my drill down at the bottom of the wall so I could drill a hole for the wire. I was really trying to avoid this, but I couldn’t figure out any better way to do it. Somehow, I am sure people out there have a nifty little system of running wires through houses. After all, how the heck do they run the wires for home security systems?

Anyway, I cut out a clean piece. It wasn’t hard to cut a matching piece to put back in the hole. When I first started cutting, I figured I could just cut the piece of wall out and then return that same piece back in the wall. Due to the screws holding the wall in place, I was unable to do that. Oh well.

Today, I decided to patch the wall back up and get it ready for paint. I took a few very, very exciting pictures to illustrate how I did this.

This is the “before” photo. As you can clearly see, I did a marvelous job at cutting the new piece of sheetrock.

Since I didn’t have my 4″ putty knife handy (it was in the basement), I decided to go ahead with my 1 1/2″ inch one. This proved to be a bit more difficult getting the joint compound on the wall. I am used to a “smear” here and a “smoosh” there, but this kind of just made a mess. Basically, the trick is to get enough joint compound on the wall and for it to remain wet enough for the tape to adhere to. I had to put on a little extra to get this job done.

Once all the joint compound was on the wall, I finished adhering the rest of the tape to it. When I was putting up the tape, I made sure to press extra hard on it with the putty knife to squeeze all the additional joint compound out from behind the tape.

Finally, I added some joint compound on top of the tape and smoothed it out with my big 10″ putty knife. I love using this towards the end because it does such a great job cleaning up the mess I made earlier. All I have to do now is wait for it to dry and then add another coat. Then I sand and paint. Word up.