Hey Ken,
I'm not sure if I want to help you or if I want to show off but I want to do some taping up in Spencer. I can make it for Sunday but until then a word of advice if I may: never pad mud to allow for shrinkage thereby requiring sanding. USG "green bucket" mud from Home Depot (none of that light weight sorority sister mud) is what you need. It is full weight but it shrinks least, sticks best and sands out nicest.
The EZ Sand as a skim coat somehow reqires almost zero sanding if you mix it right and put it on like a pro BUT it takes nothing less than primer and 2 coats of color to hide the flash spot under lighting. Also the 90/45/20 minute set times are not quite the same as the time in which it can be sanded and even re-coated if you're not under scheduling constraints.
I gotta make sure I don't feel like I'm gonna die on Sunday morning but that's what I'd like to do. My first time holding a hawk and trowel for money was in the early 90's. Actually the 90's were about framing, hanging and taping Circuit Cities and Best Buys.
Maybe I just wanna make fun of how you hung the rock.
About the best comment I heard describing drywallers was "every board hanger I ever met was the best". It's true too. It's like short man complex but for brains.
Oh, that peeled paper that pulled wall paper leaves behind to bubble under your mud can be sealed with a shellac based primer (Bin Primer/Zinsser) and coated with EZ Sand to avoid bubbling. That method also worked for me on horse hair or wood lathe (or whatever it's called) in a million year old house in Maine that was rotting away. I mesh taped the cracks first.
I'm glad 'the room' is still intact. I'm still a little bit haunted by the sound of the snare drum on Money For Nothing. I can't be remembering that right.
