"Bill" wrote

1) Can I, in good conscience, use traditional "paper joint tape
"through-out my project, or should I be using fiberglass tape at butted
joints and wider joints?

I have used paper tape only, since I used some fiberglass on a room in my
own house. On contracted houses, I tend to use drywall finishing
subcontractors. I will never use fiberglass again. Reasons a

Fiberglass is very easy to sand too thin, (especially on butted joints) and
then the pattern of the weave stands out very clearly. The only way to not
make it look like **** is to put yet another coat on top of what you thought
was finished, and sand more lightly. After a year of temp and humidity
changes, it seems as though the mud between the sheets pushed out and left a
ridge, right through the fiberglass. Bummer. Put up with it, or apply more
mud and paint whole wall again, so it does not looked patched. BIG bummer.
I have never seen this happen with paper tape. Never. If you sand too far
with paper, it starts to warn you with a fuzzy paper appearance. Easy to
stop at that point, and not have to add more mud, or at most add a very
small amount in a few small places.

The arguement for leaving more space is unfounded, in my opinion. Everyone
has opinions, like assholes, some stink more than others. If you use paper,
you will have at least a sixteenth inch of mud over top of the tape in order
to have a good tapered butt finish. That is enough. Squeeze mud firmly
down into the crack that is there, and don't worry about it. Trust me, the
pros don't worry about it, and that includes the good pros.

If the paper on the edge of your butt is a little loose from the rock, use a
knife to cut a small taper, or champher (sp?) down the loose edge, so the
loose paper will be gone. That is the maximum you should need to do to get
a good professional finish. If both sheets are nailed well enough, there
will not be more movement that a sixteenth of surface mud can handle, and
hold up forever.

So, is it clear which I think you should use? I hope so. (this is a)
Strong opinion from me, and I do not hold strong opinions about everything.
Some things do not matter (in my opinion) and this is not one of them. Do
it my way or you will live to regret it, if you are a perfectionist. That
is in my opinion, I would add.

Now, does mine stink, or is it one of the ones that smell of roses? g
I've decided "Stanley's Complete Drywall" book didn't really help me very
much at all. In retrospect, I probably should have bought a book
on "finishing".

2) One place I looked today online suggested leaving plenty of space, and
using angled cuts between butted drywall ends, and even using fiberglass
joint tape too add more strength. Stanley's book didn't discuss any of
these issues. The butted ends of my drywall are pretty close and I was
contemplating whether to chip away at them with box-cutter and whether to
use fiberglass joint tape on them.


Now, as Yogi Berra might say, I'm ready to start but I'm not ready to
start...

Bill