Sanding/Feathering on Drywall with Knockdown Texture

12 years ago

I'm painting our bedroom wall. Before we paint, I've also just fixed a giant hole in the drywall: cut out a 1'x16" rectangular section and replaced with new drywall piece.

I've mesh/fiberglass taped and applied a fresh layer of joint compound and wet-sanded a bit. Now, I'm starting to sand and my previous experience (twice before) has me worrying about blending into the existing knock-down texture.

For walls with KD texture, is it OK to have less feathering on edges since I have to replace all the KD anyway? ie. going for "smooth as glass feathering" isn't needed? If I apply a wider Skim layer, the additional compound annoyingly fills gaps in existing KD (making it all flat) and then there is more to sand, further outside of the repaired area.

I've done moderate sanding to avoid a straight visible seam, just trying to avoid spreading the compound out even further, ruining more of the existing texture.

Does this logic translate into a decent real world repair?

Thanks!

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Comments (3)

sierraeast
12 years ago
"If I apply a wider Skim layer, the additional compound annoyingly fills gaps in existing KD (making it all flat) and then there is more to sand, further outside of the repaired area".

Where the new mud bumps up to the existing knockdown, instead of trying to feather it out with sand paper, use a sponge dampened with water and feather out the mud from the knockdown. Only sand the patched area. When you re-spray, go light where the new meets the existing.
cebury
Original Author
12 years ago
I finished yesterday, before reading your post. Although wet-sanding IS what I did at the edges.

My mistake: I didn't sacrifice (i.e. mud/skim) far enough outside of the patch line. I tried to feather it about only 1-1.5" inches from the tape -- and that caused too much of a "raised border" look that became more visible once painted.

The last two times I feathered it far out, it blended well, but my knockdown-from-a-bottle looked awful. So this time I was trying to limit the area I needed to apply it (i.e. not ruin any existing knockdown). However, I didn't go far enough out and caused the raised border: what do you know? My knockdown this time looked excellent inside the patched area -- just the improper feathering looked amateurish.

Not easy to make it match.... Maybe the 4th repair will be perfect!

And maybe someone else will find this helpful.

Thanks for the reply.
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sierraeast
12 years ago
There are a lot of variables when matching most any texture. The first being whether or not you know what type of texture materials were used on the existing. As an example, trying to match up using joint compound when a bagged texture material was used on the existing rarely works unless you spend a lot of time experimenting with the mix. Joint compounds differ in consistency and so do texture materials. You can typically play around with it until you get it close or even dead on, but it takes patience unless you just happen to hit the mother lode on the first try. If you aren't happy with the outcome, play around with the mix and you can even experiment on a scrap piece of wall board until you get it right, then transcribe to your repair.