paint walls or refinish floors first?
I am helping my daughter and her husband with her nwely purchased home that needs a lot of work. The house has carpets but solid wood floors that they want to refinish. The walls and ceilings need repairs, they are covered with the old plaster board. Should we finish the floors before we paint, reason I ask is that the sanding of the fllord creates a lot of dust.
My second question is concerning patching the walls wwith regular drywall. We open up some walls for plumbing repairs and removed a couple of hall closets. I notice that the wall are not straight andwhen I put the level on the plaster walls thay are not perfectly even. I already covered the opennings and tried to match the thickness of the plaster. I did the fisrt mud coat and doesn’t look to good.
I am not experienced in finishing drywall. I have a couple of drywall books.
Thank you guys and thanks for your help. Handy@home
Replies
If the carpet is definitely getting tossed, here's the order I would do things:
Repair any damaged areas, paint the ceiling, remove the carpet, paint the trim (including the baseboard, which is why the carpet needs to be removed), paint the walls (use drop cloths to keep paint off of the floor) and finally, re-finish the floor.
The dust created when the floor is re-finished can easily be brushed off any surfaces in that room so the fact that it was already painted shouldn't be a problem (as long as the paint is dry :-) ).
As to your second question (actually, I'm not really sure what the question is)... I've repaired plaster using drywall and joint compound many times. One of the key goals is to get the 2 surfaces as flush with each other as possible. If needed, you can even use 1/4" or 3/8" drywall with shims placed behind it as needed. Be careful not to drive a screw/nail into the voids near the shims because it will pull right through.
If you can't get the patch quite flush, err on the side of the patch being too low. You can always fill low spots a little at at time with compound. If any repairs require a thick layer of compound, consider using a setting-type compound instead of the pre-mixed. Setting compounds don't shrink as they cure.
You will need to tape any joints where the drywall patch and the plaster meet. If you don't, a crack almost definitely will appear there at some point in the future. If you're not comfortable with regular joint tape, you can use a wet and stick joint tape. There are some very good ones out there. My local paint store carries a brand called Custom Tapes wall repair tape that works very well.
Finishing drywall is like learning to type, you can get the basics from a book, but mostly it's just practice.