During the repair done by yourself, in the apartment or house you need to have a maximum of skills and knowledge. Experience, even if it is not there, will certainly come in the process of repair work, since when doing repairs yourself you will not only have to glue the wallpaper or paint the floors, which undoubtedly also needs to be done well, but also prepare the wall areas for further coating, whether it be wallpaper , facing tile or simple paint. In this article, we note the main nuances that you must know before you putty the walls , and also dwell on how to putty the walls with your own hands, what is necessary for this and how to level the walls with putty.
Briefly about putty.
Putty - a material that allows you to remove bumps and roughness on a wide variety of surfaces. With its help, joints between plasterboard sheets are removed, cracks and irregularities are smoothed out, ideal evenness of plastered walls is given, etc.
Manufacturers produce putty in finished or dry form, which is diluted with water. Existing types of putty: universal, finish, facade, standard, cement, polymer, oil and others. Universal putties can be used for almost any surface, but do not forget that there are special types of putty designed for use on certain surfaces and materials. Therefore, at the initial stage, you should determine what material will be putty on the walls with your own hands.
To align the walls using gypsum putty mixtures or mixtures based on cement. If the question is how to level the walls with putty for subsequent wallpapering or painting? Then gypsum putty is an ideal material, because after final processing and drying, it acquires a white color. It is important to remember that such putty is permissible for use only indoors, and its solution does not last long, therefore, it is necessary to dissolve such putty immediately before work.
Cement putties, after final processing and drying, become gray. The life expectancy of this material is significantly longer than that of the previous species, but the acquired gray color can be a minus when used, therefore, at present such putty is mainly used for outdoor works.
It must be remembered that ordinary putty is applied with a layer of not more than 5 mm. For thicker layers, a thick-layer mixture is used, which can be applied with an 8 mm layer. For symbolic puttying of walls, when there is a need to close up minor recesses, it is better to choose a finishing gypsum putty, the permissible application thickness of which is 1-2 mm.
How to putty the walls correctly?
The first stage is preparation.
At the very beginning, you need to prepare the surface of the walls, namely: remove old tiles, wallpaper or whitewash, remove the stucco from the places where it is behind, removing all weakly held pieces. Then go to the primer of the wall surfaces. A primer is a composition that penetrates deep into walls, inhibits the development of fungi and mold in them, and also provides better adhesion of the putty to the wall surface.
The next step is to putty the walls with your own hands.
From the tools you need to prepare a narrow spatula and a metal trowel or a wide spatula, as well as utensils for putty mortar. A narrow spatula is used only for spreading the mixture over a wide spatula, with which we stretch the putty in the horizontal direction along the wall, a layer above the layer, starting from the bottom and rising up. Excess putty from the wall must be removed. This method is applicable if the puttying of the walls with your own hands is done to the middle of the wall from a vertical angle.
The method of applying putty in the middle of the wall will be different. Application is made from the bottom up, while the residues are removed with semicircular movements in the same direction.
If you need to apply a second layer of putty, then you can go to it only after the first layer dries, and you sanded and primed it.