Sheetrock Joint Compound Storage

Alright guys, I have two 5 gallon buckets of Sheetrock mud that I used when I sprayed a texture ceiling in my upstairs floor of my house. Now I am going to scrape the popcorn ceiling in my basement and spray an orange peel texture. I have stored the mud in my non-heated garage since this past summer and through the winter where it could have froze. My question is, Is the mud still good to use or is it junk? I opened it up and it looks good, but on the label it says to protect from freezing. Has anyone here used mud that has been frozen and if so how did it turn out?

jech84, I am a taper and sprayer and I would not use it. When they mix their mud they put glue in with it to help hold and it that freezes and thaws it gets real watery and gooey. Most of the mud will more than likely stick but there is some that will peel off. Also since you are spraying over old popcorn ceilings the dust is also going to be an issue for bonding. What we do is take a pesticide sprayer and spray water on it reducing the dust and a nicer, cleaner scrap!!! If you decide to do this don’t be afraid to soak it, the sheet rock will dry.. Hope this helps have any more ?’s feel free to ask

A bucket of mud is around $10 why take the chance. It could haunt you. Kinda the way the Pack haunted the Steelers yesterday.

I am a finisher also and I wouldn’t use the compound eigther. I’ve had a couple buckets freeze and it turns to a cottage cheese consistency and when mixed you can’t get the lumps out, they just break down to smaller chunks. When removing the ceiling texture use a bug sprayer like said above and wet it several times until its soft. Take a finishing kife, 10″ knife works good and slide it between the sheetrock and the texture, it peels right off,,, if it hasen’t been painted with a gloss paint. If it was painted with a flat paint it just takes a little longer for the water to soak through and the texture to soften. This suface has to be pretty clean so try to remove all the texture and residue and then wiping with a sponge if necessary. Proform works the best for a standard orangepeel, the black lid bucket. It is important to get the dust off the surface if there is any. Excess sanding creats dust and if theres enough of it, it will show through the paint and the surface will look hazy, especially with a gloss paint. Make sure the surface is fairly smooth then spray texture evenly. If it has a gloss paint over the popcorn I just drape the room with visquene and put dropcloths down and use a disc sander. Water will not penatrate that surface very well, it takes alot longer, all day to get to the point where the texture does soften, it will but it takes alot longer. Sanding the surface is a bear, very dusty so wear a face mask filter and prepare for alot of dust.

Here’s another drywall question for the experts…. I recently helped my brother in-law do a cieling in his basement. We drywalled the cieling and framework we built to cover his forced air duct work. We used the metal corner bead that is covered with paper that you glue on. We had a piece that I believe was a little short on glue on part of it. It seemed to handle the finishing just fine but when we stomped the cieling it started to crack along the edge of the paper. The moisture from the stomping seemed to release the glue. All the other 25 pieces we installed look great. What can I do to fix this with the least amount of work????

You can try to reglue the corner and mud over the top of it, but chances are it will recrack. The only real fix is to pull out the CB and replace it completely.

Thanks guys for the info, I figured pretty much figured I would need to buy some new mud but just thought I would ask some of IDO’s experts.

Spraying the popcorn with water worked awesome when I redid the ceilings up stairs last summer. It really cut the dust down to almost nothing.

I agree with Farmboy, the joint compound was to dry for good adhesion. One of the very first things you learn is the mud has always got to be wet, if it looses some of it, it will be a dry joint. Just pull it off carefully and apply the joint compound to the back of the corners tape and press it on with your fingers and thumb. When its bottomed out or seated use your finishing knife, 4″ is a little easier to handle and press in hard on the actual tape trying to get the corner bottomed out good, it should seat right back into where the other tape was. Speed is an essence, you don’t have to run just don’t let the cmp. set to long, 5 to 10 minutes max. Add a little water to your cmp. and that gives you some extra time to do it.

Once it dries and shrinks back then just put your finishes on over the top. Put just enough cmp. on to fill the voids and knife your edges in,(next to the drywall). When its dry all you have to do is sponge the edges, it will look great. Long strokes is the name of the game when finishing, not short strokes like spackeling,,,Good luck

Farmboy is right in a way but if you wanna do it right take it off and put new on. The cornerbead with paper is not to be used with glue. Glue will soften when wet. The way to put it on is to put joint compound behind it and wipe tight this will not let go when redoing the ceiling..

I used the 3M corner bead spray adheasive. It’s like contact cement and meant to be used on this type of corner bead. I think the moisture did cause the glue to release but it was just because there wasn’t enough glue or it had too much air time before the bead was put up.

We’ll get it fixed. We figure we got nothing to lose by tring to get some glue behind it. If that doesn’t work then we’ll remove and replace the piece of corner bead.

Thanks for the help fellas.

I know what your useing now Ben, Ive used the same sprayon glue myself. It sounds like you said, it may have set too long befor you pressed the corner on. I’m still a big fan of steel corners and I staple them on with 1 1/4″ staples then fill the corners. Theres nothing wrong with the sprayon glue as a lot of guy who build very nice homes around here use the system. Its pretty hard to beat steel corners that are stapled on, I’ve never seen them come loose. Around here the finishers that have alot of corners to put up do it with glue and then take a bag of USG lightweight quickset and put a 1/2 bag in a 1/2 bucket of Proform and it hardens nice with less shrinkage, instead of straight joint compound. You can recoat the joint compound a few hous later instead of waiting for it to dry by the next day. Doing it this way you can get a 3 coat finish down too two finishes, tricks to the trade.