How to Texture Walls - Santa Fe Texture

Hi, I'm Nils and today I'm going to be showing you how to do some texturing on newly mudded walls. Check out my previous videos if you need some help with mudding and taping. I'm not a professional at this, I'm just kind of learning as I go here, I've gotten help from professionals to try to learn how to do this myself and I think it's something that most people can give a try and come out with a pretty reasonable result. So as you can see I've kind of started doing some texturing up here. This is kind of the look I'm going for where most of the wall is covered but then we've got these spots that are uncovered, we've gotten the wall behind it nice and smooth and flat and everything already so now it's just a matter of applying this texture and getting the look that I want. One thing to keep in mind with texturing is that if you mess it up you can use your blade and scrape everything off and start all over again so it's not something where you are completely stuck with whatever result you come out with the first time. You can do a little bit of practicing, you can learn as you go. So I've come up with this totally ghetto little tool here but it's doing the job for me. So I had some extra plumbing from my sprinkler system outside and just put together, I've just got a board under here and I've applied a couple of tubes to it and screwed the pipes to the board. It's all just PVC stuff. Whatever works for you. What I wanted to get for, or what I wanted to come up with was some sort of a surface with a handle on it and then I've wrapped it in plastic bags so that I can reuse it easily and then the plastic also gives kind of a nice adhesion I guess or a different texture as opposed to just using the board and it really makes it easier to reuse and clean after the fact. I just chuck the bags. So I've got my handy little ghetto tool here. I'm using topping compound and it's this slightly beige stuff here and if you're buying this at Home Depot or wherever it's the stuff with the blue lid or the blue box. So I'm going to go ahead and apply some of the topping compound to my ghetto tool we'll call it. I don't know what these things are called. Anyways I'm going to apply some of that here and then dab it on. I've got a smaller, this little three inch blade here and I'm not going to apply it necessarily all that evenly because I don't want a whole lot on there. I'm just going to, and you know another option is just to put this right in the bucket or the box that you're using. Just you know stick the whole thing right in there and that's fine too. I'm just going to get kind of a light coat on here and I found that that seems to do the job for me. And I'm going to kind of break this up a little bit so there are high spots and low spots and then it's just a matter of applying this to the wall. Now a couple things as I start to, and I'm going to go right to the edges here too, working around this outlet. That's about all I'm going to get out of that one round. Set that down. And I'm going to get my trowel ready here because as soon as I start to apply this stuff I want to make sure I'm not spreading it smooth because there might be enough mud on there that I could basically kind of clean the whole thing up and make a nice smooth flat surface which is not what I'm after. What I'm after is something more like that. Just little empty spots here and there and then I'm wiping the blade in between each swipe so that I get that extra mud off. Now in here that's a little more textured than I want so I'm just going to scrape that off and I can reapply that with a thicker amount of mud on there. That's a nice thing. You can just, like I was saying, you can kind of pick and choose what you like or don't like with this. Then the next thing you want to make sure you're doing is getting a nice smoothie. You can probably see in here I've got some lines. One thing is afterward, a lot of these little lines and strokes and little lumps from the edge of the blade, you can sand those off afterward. So get as smooth as you can beforehand, mostly just by barely touching, a nice light touch on there. Keep in mind I've never done this until today so I'm making this video to encourage you to go try it yourself and see if you can give this a try. It's not too too bad. If you find that you're bad at it, and maybe I'm bad at it, we'll see, get someone who really knows what they're doing. I've got some friends who are just amazing at it and do an excellent job and it's definitely worth the money to pay someone who knows what they're doing to do this if you're not able to get a good result yourself. I'm a DIY guy. I like to try everything so I'm giving this a go. So this is kind of the look I'm going for, this sort of occasional open area in there like that. This is a little bit more finer than I want so I think I might apply some more mud in there. So with that in mind I'm going to grab my small knife again and my ghetto tool. I heard the name for these things once but I can't remember what it is. I'm sure in the comments I'll get some help with that. Ok so I've got a lumpy root there so I'm going to try this again over here where I was. Make sure I get up here. I'm being careful not to do too much at a time. As you start to spread this out or thin this out you're going to run out of mud on your ghetto tool to take care of it so I don't want to do that. Alright, wiping off that excess. I'm going to apply a little bit more there where I see some spots that could use some extra. In fact I'll just do that over here too where I know I had some kind of overly textured areas that I didn't really like the look of. Coming right up to the edge here. And that last movement across is just going to be real light. Get things nice and smooth and hopefully not leave any strokes or marks or anything. So here I've got a little snag it looks like that I came across so I'm just going to lightly come across and I'm going to fill some of that in. And again this is all up to your personal taste. If you want to leave some of that kind of stuff go for it. I see a little bit of texturing here that's on the mud that I'm going to want to smooth out later. So I'm just going to use my sanding sponge here when this is all nice and dry and just knock that down. I'm not too worried about that at all right now. I want to keep the sanding to a minimum of course. The more I can do beforehand and get it nice and clean right now the better. But I know that I've got a little bit of leeway as far as sanding goes. So I'm just going to continue this process. I'll show you another wall here that I'm going to be doing on the opposite side of the bathroom and hopefully get this thing all finished up. And I've got my surface, my tool ready here loaded up and I'm just going to go ahead and start applying this. That's about as much as I want to do on that one round. So I've got my lines there so again I'm just going to do a real light touch on this final one. Just barely scrape it across to kind of even everything out. And this little line right here that you can barely see, I don't know if you can see that on the camera, that's going to be a really easy one just to sand right out. So I'm going for quite a bit of a covered area. So there we go. That's a little more textured than I want so I'm going to cover some of that up. And I'm just doing a lot of wiping. Another thing along these edges like in the corners here, I'm making sure to apply some so that we don't have these barren corners all over the place that are just the flat drywall. I want to make sure those have some of that same level of texture on them as well. So I'll just apply that back here and then bring it all on over. So right now this is thicker than I want. I'm just going to go through again, smooth it on down and just like before, kind of get it to the place I want and then my last swipe over it is going to be nice and light so that we don't get any lines. So that's basically it. We've got now a textured bathroom here in this case and so I wish you luck on your project. If you have any feedback for me or anything like that or any video responses of how your project came out, I'd love to see it. Good luck.