How many coats after running tape

joepro0000

Bevelation - It does make a difference, check again the level 4 I thought was 3 coats. I'm good enough to finish walls with 2 coats, but 3 coats eliminates touch-up. Sometimes we even put a 4th coat, real slick, so basically when sanding we just give it a quick pass, less than 1 sec, and make sure the edges are sanded off.

Bevelation

I hear you on the slick coat to minimize sanding, but to say a third coat eliminates touch up to me seems strange. Sounds like you do a lot of commercial buildings. If it's not level 5, they plain don't care if there's a little ridge or orange peel above 10 feet on big wall, offices don't need much touch up, and quite often the painter can manage 5 touch ups per thousand feet. A good sanding job after 2 coats in my experience is good. On the residential jobs,I don't see how a 3rd coat is going to save you from trade damage.

Here: http://www.harddrywall.com/PAGES/layers.html

Realistically, every taper should be "good enough" to finish walls with 2 coats.

joepro0000

Your right, I correct myself, I did not mean eliminate touch-up, rather reduce touch-up. Because there always is some, but theres ways to eliminate it. Around my way, most painters won't dare touch a pan and knife. Its true, a real taper should finish it 2 coats, thats why they call it tape, bed, and skim. Matters do come in hand on how good the drywall was hung too. Out here on my jobs, people net-pick the walls to death. We can't allow any rigids, marks, dents, etc. We do alot of commerical/retail work, and when the owner's rep does the walk-thru, they basically on come to walk the store to look at the walls. Thats the main thing they put the little blue tapes on. So finish in my parts need to be the closest to perfect you can get it. I wish I can get away with that type of thinking, saying offices don't need much touch up and painters can do some. I used to be a punch-out finalist, basically be the last finisher in a high-rise condo, and have to punch -out the pieceworker's mess, and trade damage. So i got a customed to fine -tuning walls.

Bevelation

AAAAAAAAAAHH!!
It's true....so true. Depending the builder, they can either be easy on you, or impossible. So much fickle stuff. Currently things are good here because we have a painter that communicates with us and is willing to work things out, but others before have been a nightmare with the blue tapes. One building I was on last year had the painters, builder's deficiency crews, and all the super's on top of us for doing touch-ups. Half of the junk the deficiency guys stickered was dirt picked up from the paint rollers. Poor organization is what it worked out to be, and we had to work around guys in different stages of painting. What a mess. I'm so glad that's over. As a head taper and pieceworker, I can definitely appreciate what you just said. I get to be the sucker for touching up after other pieceworkers (not to say I dislike it, I just ummm.... don't love it). I just keep reminding myself that I don't want to waste time touching up after myself, therefore I do the job the best I can.

Errm, sorry back to the topic. 2 coats of filler. Thorough sand and light check. No 3 coat jobs because I need the exercise.