Walls and Ceilings - Drywall mess! Please help

We had about 3.5 feet of water in our living room and kitchen. Some volunteers came in and drywalled it all....and it got painted. It is terrible!!!!!!!! The seams are all bumped up like they mudded it but never bothered to sand it...how can we fix this without cutting it all out and redoing it?

Any suggestions would really be helpful!

Welcome to the forums!

It won't be easy but you can repair it. Scrape and sand it the best you can and then smooth it out with joint compound. While it's best to not have any high spots, it is unavoidable on butt joints which is where we will typically feather it out 12" on each side to make it appear level.

Sanding through fresh rubbery paint is not easy, and clogs sand paper grit.

Scraping is my advice.

I did a small area just the other day where I stood a stiff 3 inch metal putty knife on edge and pulled it toward me and literally shaved off the terrible high spot of mud in 1 square foot. But to do tons of square feet of this is really going to be a pain. You may want to make a tool out flat stock of metal that you can use a disc sander to sharpen the edge, and then scrape with this. Once you scrape off the paint, scraping the mud is not that hard. But it will be time consuming. It will make less powder flying in the air, than sanding, also.

I was thinking also that if the seams were not properly mudded the seam tape will stick out from the wall, if you push on the bump and it gives in then you might just use a putty knive and start scraping it off, then you will have to start all over and seam the joints, hopefuly it will be this easy. good luck