Can we talk about the time my mud mix turned into soup on a ceiling job?

I was hanging a new living room ceiling in a house near downtown Austin, Texas, and figured I'd mix a fresh batch of all-purpose mud. I got the water ratio wrong, though, and after the first coat, the mud was dripping off my trowel like pancake batter. I had to stop everything, scrape it all off, and clean the boards while it was still wet. That cost me about 2 hours of work, and I ended up using a thicker setting compound to fix the base. Has anyone else had a mud consistency disaster mess up their whole day?

2 comments

2 Comments

ryan6537d ago

Pancake batter" is exactly how my buddy described his mud disaster last summer. He was doing a garage ceiling in San Marcos and his mix was so thin it started pooling on the plastic below like a giant puddle. Took him forever to scrape and reapply, and he still talks about it anytime someone mentions mud consistency.

craig.brian6d ago

Yeah, how many of us have a buddy who learned that lesson the hard way? My friend Dave was doing a basement in Austin and mixed his mud way too thin for the first coat. He ended up with a bunch of sagging lumps on the tape that looked like weird reptile scales when it dried. He had to sand half of it off and start over, and now he's the guy who weighs his water before he even opens the bucket of joint compound.