Handy Tips and Tricks
Recipes and Shortcutlets.
Things I've learned over the years.
Some obvious, some so sneaky and lowdown, I have to figure them out all over again each time.
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DIY Styrofoam Spackle
EPS. It's a joy. It's a nightmare. Joy. Nightmare. Nightmare. Joy.
Rule of thumb is, if it's smaller than your thumb, EPS is pretty much worthless. It breaks. It disintegrates. The slightest whiff of Super 77 and it's gone in a puff of acetone. Styrofoam is for BIG.
What do you use to fill gaps and holes in it?
Plaster? Sure, have fun with that. Drywall mud? A little better perhaps, but you're still gonna have to deal with a different hardness when you start sanding, and sand you will.
Really, you WILL sand.
SO ... the closest thing I found commercially was DAP
Lightweight Spackle. It used to be awesome, but then they started making it all healthy and took out all the good stuff. Now it's kind of rubbery and doesn't sand like it used to. Still, it's not the worst.
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BUT ... what IS great is something I like to call, well,
DIY Styrofoam Spackle:
30% Drywall mud.
90 min. is nice 'cause it's a bit softer when set, but go ahead and use 20 min. because your client is driving over to pick up the job and you only have ten minutes.
60% Chopped Polyethethene
(Or, as it's called at Douglass and Sturgess, "Fluff Stuff."
Mix the two components together DRY. Mix it. MIX IT!
Store it in the old empty DAP lightweight spackle bucket and
mix it with water as needed. It's a tad lumpy, but when set and
dry, it sands at almost the exact same rate as EPS.
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Whoohoo!. No more high spots!
You can tweak the recipe to match whatever — like if you're using extruded insulation foam. You know. The "good" stuff.
The other trick — and it's a good one — is that regardless of what you are patching and filling EPS with, you can sand it WET.
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Use drywall screen. Sanding wet will give you a fighting chance at getting even surfaces. Wet sanding also reduces the tearing that happens when sanding EPS.
Be sure to rinse off any killed plaster or drywall muck. There isn't a primer on earth that will stick that crap back on.
(Don't get me started.)
Glove Sander:
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This falls under the "If it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid" category.
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Here's what you will need:
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A glove, any cheap glove, even a rubber glove, with sandpaper
cut up and glued to it. Thats all. Cut up some sandpaper and spray glue it to the glove.
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It's great for sanding uneven surfaces and swell for styrofoam finishing. Don't be embarrassed to try it. No one will know.
