Updated on August 14, 2024
Kitchen Makeover: Update #3. Learn how to cover seams on vinyl walls in a manufactured home with tips and tricks for making it look professional.
I need to do a few more things in the kitchen before I reveal the finished room.
Today, I thought I would post about our spackling project. For many, many weeks, that was pretty much all my life was consumed with.
I was up to my eyeballs in the spackling. I even had to take week-long breaks from the spackle to avoid going crazy.
Supplies:
- Sheetrock All Purpose Joint Compound
- FibaTape
- Sheetrock Paper Drywall Joint Tape
- 10″ Drywall Knife
- Various Putty/drywall knives (not all shown)
- Inside corner tool – I didn’t find this tool to be very helpful
- Drywall Sanding Sponge
- Other sanding tools
How to Cover Seams in Manufactured Home Walls
Please note that I am no drywall expert. I am a complete amateur. Amateurs should probably not spackle. It is not a fun job and much harder than it looks! I did, however, get a lot of useful information here.
Below, I will share how I learned to cover up seams in mobile home walls. Your wall will look just like regular drywall in a traditional home.
Remove Wall Seam Strips
I told you in a previous post that we removed all the wall seam strips on the wall. I don’t have pictures of this process, but they come off easily. You can pry them off with a pry bar. Then, remove any loose nails from the wall.
Clean Walls
The first step in how to cover seams on vinyl walls (or a joint seam taping project) in a manufactured home is to wash down your walls. My house is at least ten years old, so there is a lot of built-up gunk on the walls, especially since this is the kitchen.
Note: We originally tried to cover the seams with spackle and no tape. This was not a good idea so that you can see the old spackle in some of the pictures.
Cover Seams with Joint Tape
For the straight seams, you can use the self-adhesive mesh joint tape. The only tricky part of the mesh is that if you don’t cover it well with joint compound, you will see the mesh outline under your paint. We have a few spots in our house where the old homeowners did repairs, and you can see the crisscross pattern.
The above picture shows the mesh tape added over our previous spackling attempt. Before starting, I sanded most of it off.
Apply Joint Compound
Add a nice big helping of joint compound over the mesh tape.
Smooth it down with your large drywall knife.
Allow it to dry.
Sand the Spackle
Once dry, sand with a drywall sponge or other sander.
As a personal note, this drywall sanding sponge works well but does not hold up for very long. It is nice because there is much less spackle dust being flung about, but the “sanding” part of the sponge came off after only a few uses. I ended up switching to regular sanding blocks.
After one coat of spackle, your wall should look like the picture shown below. You can see streaks in the joint compound because you use the sanding sponge wet, and it hadn’t yet dried completely.
Repeat Spackle and Sanding
Now, after the second coat of spackle, it is dry and sanded. It looks better already, right?
You have to add one more coat of joint compound and then sand it again. This will be your final sanding, so pay special attention to it.
We had some awful seams that needed almost five coats of joint compound to make them look right. Ugh!
At this point, I was so sick of the whole project that no pictures were taken of anything, so I apologize for not having a picture of the third coat.
Once primed and painted, the finished seam turned out really great. You would never know there used to be a seam there.
Some tips I learned from experience with this whole project:
- Do not use self-adhesive mesh joint tape in the corners. It does not work. At. All. The paper tape is not all that hard to work with. You lay down a coat of joint compound. Lightly wet the paper tape. Smoosh (that is a word, right?) it onto your seam. Cover the tape with more compound. Smooth it out with your drywall knife.
- Make sure to do at least three coats of joint compound. It gives the project a professional look you won’t get by slapping one coat on it and calling it done. Plus, if you only do one coat, the tape can be lifted from the seam over time. We have this problem in our bathroom, where the previous homeowners must have only done one coat. I promise you will thank me for it when you are done.
- Drywall joint taping should be done before the rest of your house is finished, molding installed, etc. But you can make it work if you have to after the fact. There is hope for you if, like me, you have had to look at hideously ugly vinyl wallpaper for five years or more.
- The corner tool does not work if your walls are not level. Our entire kitchen doesn’t have one plumb/level/square wall.
Update: We lived in our house for eight years after we completed this project. The walls looked just as good on the day we moved out as they did when we completed it. There were no areas where the seams split or cracked.
Linda says
I’ve had my mobile home re-leveled only once in 30 years and it was expensive — $1800 for 2 or 3 hours work. I had leaking roof problems after that.
Laura Silva says
Linda,
I am sorry to hear that. I have read recommendations to get it done every 2 – 5 years. Manufactured homes are certainly a different kind of house and require their own type of maintenance.
xo,
Laura
Barbara fields says
Hi Laura
My husband and I just bought a manufactured home 17 years old and I took the strips off the seams of ours. used joint compound no tape,no sanding,the seams and where trim was removed etc.had my brother come in and he did a second coat of spackling to correct what i messed up and primed and textured the walls before spray painting ceilings and walls.still working on putting trim back up had to move in for the winter.
But for me texturing made it like the newer homes are now.covers a multitude of sins.rent machines and supplies and do yourself.my brother just happened to be a painter.
Just my story. No recommendations. Have fun on your next room
Laura Silva says
Barbara,
It is a lot of work but totally worth it in the end! Thank you for stopping by.
xo,
Laura
Sara says
What is it that you mean by your brother having to fix what you messed up? Would it not work if using only joint compound and no tape? I am currently renovating my mobile home and have already removed the wall strips but not sure where to start next. Some have told me you could simply spackle the seams and call it a day haha. But here it seems that is not the case! Thanks in advance!
Laura Silva says
Sara,
We had to fix where we tried to simply spackle over the seam. As the spackle dries, it cracks and sinks into the space left between the two wall boards. This situation gets worse over time as the home shifts and moves. Even if you are having your home re-leveled every few years, I feel like our manufactured home settles and shifts more than a site built home. The proper way to cover the seams is to use both the joint compound and the joint tape. You will get a much better looking finished project that will hold up over time. We completed this renovation in 2011 and the walls all still look great. The old homeowners did some covering of seams with either no joint tape or with very little joint compound, and we are having to go back over those places, sand them down and re-do them. Hope that helps!
Laura
Sara says
yes thank you so much!!! :)
Sue says
Laura, I am reviving a late 70s manufactured home. I would like to share it with others just like you are doing. Did you have to create a blog or can it be done inside Pinterest?
Laura Silva says
Most things on Pinterest are linked to either a blog or website. If you are wanting to simply share photos of your progress, a platform like Instagram may be a better route for you to share, as it is all images. Hope that helps!
Laura
Alma Stout says
Can this be done if you have previously painted the walls? They were primed before painting. My walls have the little ridges that go up and down the panel. You can still see the ridges after priming and two coats of paint. Did you skim coat the panel as the taped area would be smooth and the rest of the panel would show the ridges.
Laura Silva says
Alma,
I am not a drywall professional so I am not really sure. I think you would be able to do this over painted walls, but would maybe need to be sanded first or possibly a coat of primer under where you are adding the tape. We have a similar situation in our laundry room that I will be tackling this summer. To make it all smooth in the kitchen, I applied joint compound, and then the tape, covering that with more joint compound. I allowed it to dry, sanded it, and repeated adding layers of joint compound and sanding between coats until I had a nice smooth surface. I explain it all in much more detail in the post. Hope that helps!
xo,
Laura
Beverl Swartz says
In process of doing home like this, except i am covering all the vinyl with skip coat of mud. Leaving some lines,a little extra mud for a bit of tecture that can be repaired if needed by a bit of mud. The best part about tbis approach is i don’t have to sand and i am leaving a dipped seam top and bottom for painting without taping crown,etc.
Laura Silva says
That sounds like a great plan to get it covered! The sanding was definitely the worst part. It was really time-consuming. However, I am still loving our finished walls. It has all held up really well.
xo,
Laura