How To Do Light Checking
Light checking is a very important step. In this step we will buff out nicely everything we coated with a sponge. I'd have to say this is my least favorite part of the process, but one of the most important.
For you to see all the areas that need to be sanded and buff out, we use a light. Like when doing the pole sanding, this light show you all the imperfection on the walls. Use your sponge to sand out and bad or rough area, and use a pencil to mark out areas that cannot be buff out, that need more mud or what we call a touch up. DO NOT MARK TOUCH UPS WITH ANYTHING ELSE BUT A PENCIL. Touch ups are ok to do, not a big deal, part of the process, if theres lots of touch ups, its normal for home owners, specially with the 2 coat method we have shown you. The touch ups are sanded out easily after they dry.
Things To Look For While Light Checking
- LOOK FOR EDGES
- LOOK FOR IMPERFECTIONS
- LOOK FOR PIN HOLES
- LOOK FOR SCRATCHES
- LOOK FOR DRY TAPES (TAPE WITH NO MUD BEHIND IT)
- ANY KIND OF RIDGES
IMPORTANT: Use a sponge with a rough and a soft side. Big ridge or scratches need to be hit with the rough side of the sponge first, then buffed out to a nice smooth finish with the softer side.
When marking with your pencil, make a big long line to where your touch area is, making sure that you see it later (since its going to be covered with new mud). Sand all the surfaces of the beads down, if your doing round bead, this is where you need to sand the round of the bead down to the plastic.
LOOK FOR TOUCH UPS IN THE FIELD. The field ? That's the middle of the board. Its easy to concentrate on light checking the mud areas and forgetting to look for other imperfections in the middle of the board. Look for damage that may have occur from moving or other. Try to keep your light right against the wall at all times. It will show you more things that need to be sanded or touched up. Always follow the wall, don't jump all over the place. Once you done walking around doing the bottoms of the wall, use a saw horse bench to go around and light check the top half of the walls.
Where we are working the ceilings are going to be textured, so we don't bother with little nicks on the ceiling, we only mark and repair big important things like a dry tape. If your going to have you ceiling painted, then you need to go around and light check the ceilings also looking for imperfections that need to either be sanded out or touched up. Make sure when your done light checking, everything is almost ready to be painted, after sanding touch up of course.
Now that your all done light checking, we go around and apply more mud to the needed areas that we marked out. We tint our mud with yellow dye in order for us to see them when we come back and sand them. Of course you don't want to use taping mud for this step, or even all purpose mud is not good for this step. It just does not sand out the same as the finishing mud. Make sure to go around one extra time after you are done to make sure you got mud on all the needed areas. Use a bigger knife to apply the touch up, you want to make this final coat a fairly big size. Also remember to feather down the edges as much as you can, making life easier for you when you come back and sand the touch ups.
