bought a 1990s house and every wall has that orange peel texture. i want smooth walls throughout but quotes for professional skim coating are insane. one guy said $4500 just for the living room and dining room. has anyone done this themselves? the youtube videos make it look not that hard but im worried im underestimating it
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Did my entire main floor last year. Its definitely doable but 'not that hard' is a stretch. The learning curve is real. My first wall looked terrible and I had to sand most of it off and start over. By the 4th wall I was getting decent results. Budget way more time than you think and buy a LOT more mud than the calculators say.
how much mud did you end up using? trying to figure out real costs
for about 1200 sq ft of wall i went through close to 20 buckets of all purpose. probably could have done it with 15 if i wasnt learning as i went. still way cheaper than paying someone
I did a bedroom as a test before committing to the whole house. Highly recommend this approach. Also rent or buy a magic trowel - the curved drywall knife specifically for skim coating. Regular knives work but the magic trowel made a huge difference for me
one thing nobody mentions is the sanding. even a decent skim coat needs sanding and sanding an entire house worth of walls creates an apocalyptic amount of dust. either get a vacuum sander attachment or accept that everything you own will be covered in white powder for weeks. we moved out furniture and still found dust in weird places months later
did this 2 years ago. my honest take: if you have patience and dont mind imperfection its totally worth it. if you want perfection youll drive yourself crazy. my walls arent quite as smooth as professional work but theyre smooth enough that we love them and we saved probably $8k doing it ourselves
late to this thread but wanted to share something that helped me a ton. instead of going straight to a trowel i used a thick nap paint roller to apply thinned down mud to the wall and then knocked it down with a wide drywall knife. way easier to get even coverage as a beginner vs trying to trowel it on. did my whole hallway this way and it came out surprisingly decent. i think i saw the technique on a forum somewhere and thought it sounded dumb but honestly it was a game changer for someone with no troweling skills lol