Walls and Ceilings - Magical Drywall Seams

I am remodeling an old farm house...Removing old plaster and lathe down to the studs and replacing with drywall. I do have some drywall experience but have never seen anything like this! I have hung and mudded the drywall in my kitchen and a single side of the tape has started showing, as well as the mudd, on every seam after it was painted. From the begining- I have applied 3 coats of mudd alowing 24 hrs curing time(Recommended by manufacturer) between each sanding and reapplying process. With the final sanding everything was smooth as a baby's "u know what" until it was introduced to paint. All dust was removed prior to priming. I then applied one coat of a primer recommended for new drywall and all seemed well. I then applied 2 coats of a good quality interior latex eggshell finish paint to the ceiling, as well as to the walls (used diff brand on walls) allowing 24hrs to cure in between coats. After the final coat of paint every seam in the drywall is showing. Almost like the mud is humped up. And only one side of the tape is showing through.. not both. Cant figure that one out! None of the screw holes are showing! Does anyone know what in the heck would cause this? Even with 2 diff good quality types of paint both ceiling and walls are showing! Please help!

The only thing I can think of is a chemical reaction. What sheet rock, tape, mud, primer and paint did you use?

Is the tape showing even on the tapered joints or only on butt joints?

Is there any consistency on which side is showing? Top?
Bottom? Left? Right?

I used the standard gypsum sheetrock and a premix joint compound. Both I purchased at Home Depot, and have used together before and never had this problem. I also used Kilz primer recommended for new drywall, Valspar paint on the ceiling, and Sherwin Williams paint on the walls.All was applied in a 75 degree room. Nothing was noticeable until I applied the final coat of both paints. Its almost like the mud swelled. Even the contractor installing our cabinets said he had never seen anything like it before. It is one big mystery! Any suggestions would be great!

The tape is showing on both butted and tapered joints. And its only one edge/side of the tape, not both. Everything was flat and smooth as could be before paint. None of the tape was touchable or visible whatsoever. Its hard to tell with the mud swelling up but there doesnt appear to be consistancy with which side of the tape is showing. Thanks for your interest guys! Hopefully someone can figure this out!

My suggestion is to make a test on one seam. Remove what's there and buy a bag of setting compound instead of the ususal drying compound. It's very cheap. It's a powder and has to be mixed but it dries in a few hours. You can do it all in a day or day and a half. Tape it, use 2 thin coats of mud, prime it and paint it.

Sorry jdeererulz, but I have to say it, you might not have had it as good as you thought. when you put eggshell sheen on the walls and ceiling it reflects light a lot different then before usually showing every inperfection. Maybe something super strange did happen, who knows. Did you sand it with a light? If you shine a light across the joint you will see everything. Sometimes something looks awsome until you paint it.

Anyway, the only thing to do now is fix it.

Thanks for all your imput! Luckily I did purchase some bags of the setting compound when I bought the premix so I am going to use your suggestion, Pulpo, and just try a diff type of mud. Guess the same handy dandy doesnt always work, we will have to see! As far as having it good, I used one of those shop lights on a stand and blared it at the ceiling and walls before, during, and after sanding and paint to make sure that I could check it all and get every angle. (My wife is a perfectionist, enough said!) How it appears now is something you would definately of seen before paint even! Either way, Ill have to fix but I am going to try Pulpo's suggestion first before I proceed, and have the rest of house do the same, and become a disaster! Thanks again! We'll see what happens!:confused:

Before I'd rip out any tape, I'd float some j/c over the affected area - a lot less work and that may be all that is needed to get it right.

The affectefed area is the entire job.

I did think about applying some more JC over but I figured it would make an even bigger mess with the mud swelled up like it is. With coats of paint over the original mess, it didnt make things any easier to try to sand the stuff down and that just showed more of the tape. I had my general contractor look at it today and he thought maybe it was some bad mud. I had used 2 diff pails of the same brand so its hard to tell. unfortunately the cabinets are going up monday and with work and meetings I dont have time to rip the entire kitchen apart to repair it. My smart wife went in there today and put a thicker texture over it and that seemed to hide most of it. you can still see where the mud is humped slightly but its better than before. I just need to figure out what caused it so it doesnt happen with the rest of the house! I am going to try diff mud as Pulpo recommended and go from there! Still remains a mystery! Thanks again for all your suggestions and if you think of anything else let me know! Whew! Sorry about the novel! :thinker:

I'll try to be gentle, but I hear the word "sand" way too much, which say way too much mud. I'm not the pro, but I learned working side-by-side with one, and the only time sand paper was allowed was at the very end, just before painting.

Take a level or good straight 4' board and hold it across your seams and you'll see the height of your tape. I don't think the tape swelled, as coops stated, it just became visible.

To fix it, your probably going to need one of those pros to get past your inspector:)

Bud

People who don't so a lot of taping tend to sand between coats. You're right about not sanding until the end or not sand at all. I worked with a guy who used water and a sponge after the 3rd coat. If you read the side of the can, it recommends that.

I've just found the following out and it IS repeatable and happened to every wall that I worked on...

I used BOTH setting-type (45 minute) and the pre-mixed joint compounds and Kilz Original primer.

We bought an older home with lots of wallpaper that came down and so we stripped the wallpaper (lots of DIF AND a steamer). It was still tough to take down and the scraper found it's way under the drywall paper sometimes along with the wallpaper peeling some drywall paper with it. We had lots of patching to do and filled the holes and sanded smooth. What's smooth - well, my Dad spent his life as an autobody repairman and I restored a '66 Mustang and painted it black - I say we qualify for doing sheetrock and getting a good finish; by the way, I'm meticulous.

After the application of the Kilz primer the areas that had joint compound DID swell. The sad part is that I also had really nice joints and I went back and sanded (Kilz is very hard primer and a pain to sand) and reapplied joint compound. I'm about ready to send a sample to the company with a before and after.

Another unfortunate part was that in one room I topcoated with a PVA primer from ACE and the latex paint bubbled afterwards. I worked VERY hard in that room to get smooth walls.

I just bought some Zinsser (oil-based) and tried that out in a room and had no swelling at all. I'm going to use Zinsser from now on.

The frustration is that any credit that would be given back wouldn't make a dent in the effort that was expended in getting the walls right. Similar to the original poster, I had one room that had the tape seam swell right out. I have no idea what to do with the room with the bubbling/rough latex - latex isn't the easiest to sand. Spending months to get the house in order only to have a $60/5 gallon product screw it up at the end just isn't acceptable.

I repeat the question I asked months ago: Did this happen on the tapered edge joints as well as the butt joints and angles?

Sorry I wasn't clear...

it happened on all applications of joint compound and especially noticeable when filling screw holes and shallow applications to fill places where the drywall was nicked from pulling off the wallpaper. I didn't notice it so much with the joints at first because it wasn't as noticeable because the whole joint swelled. It was extremely obvious where I filled small holes and scratches; what was once smooth now had high-spots and required re-sanding.
I'm going to make a before and after sample and send it to Kilz. It showed up in one room's tapered joint really bad and forced a LOT of rework - it's added another couple weeks (only get to work in evenings and weekends) to the house. Think the company will make it up to me, LOL

Was the Kilz latex or oil?

On nicks I have had pretty good luck with applying ultra thin multiple coats, over time, of spackle, as spackle is sort of damp, but not saturatingly wet, and dries fast when thin.

On terrible wall damage where I have opted to repair, rather than section out and replace, I have gouged out any paper down to the rock, primered then mud or spackle. Obviously then there is no underlying paper to blister.

Don't have an explaination as to what happened, but I stopped using the paper seam tape. I always use the mesh. I found that the paper is always problematic and you find out after the final coat of paint. Never had an issue with the mesh. Much easier to apply as well since it sticky on one side.