Mesh Tape Woes

ksensen

Got called to look at a drywall repair. Quest room and bathroom on $400,000 house about 15 years old. Every inside corner every joint including butt joints was mesh taped. They apparently hadn't done a very good job at keeping the heat on and literally every corner and every seam has popped and you can clearly see the mesh tape. (looks like it was a shoddy job to begin with- looks like crap!) what's best way to repair? They don't really want to spend the money to tear it all out and retape it but not quite sure how to proceed? Any thoughts?

Bob Kovacs

The best way to repair is to tear it out and retape. If they don't want to pay for that, tell them to get someone else to do the repair, and remind them that it'll look like crap again.

Bob

MudDobber

We specialize in repairing other peoples shoddy work, water damage, tape joints, seen it all including that. Tear it off and redo. It will require some elbow grease which ain't cheap these days. Explain that the time to just prepare it for accepting new material is lengthy. But the wound needs to be clean before applying the bandaid. There's a chance you won't get all of it ripped out, but you can apply a thin coat of mud, then PAPER tape over it. We apply a sealer/bonding agent after pulling and scraping. It will make the new material adhere better to the old material. One of our most favorite products is that USG Gypsum Accelerator. A tablespoon or two added to each pan of 30, 60, or 90 minute hotmud not only will dry quicker, (hardens in the pan in minutes) but once it sets up a bit on the wall, it's like clay and can be rubbed out and manipulated. Saves trips.

Capt-Sheetrock

You can't FIX this problem. Compound will not bond with mesh tape,period!!
Remember that they are already aware that the mesh is coming back out of the compund and cannot be fooled again by using mesh, therefore they will beat anyone to death if one tries to FIX the mesh tape.
That being said, the top angle can be fixed with crown moulding if they are up for that, cut through the mesh on all the corners, drag a rough sanding sponge through the angles and corners to remove any loose coumpound and then retape them with paper tape. Same thing with butts and flats, pull all the mesh that will come off, them re tape with paper tape and finish out with compound. There is no easy fix to this, they got screwed by drywallers that used an inferior product and now they are looking for someone to fix it for them, and usually they want the "FIXER" to do it at little or no cost, be careful not to screw yourself on this one.