Cornered

You’ve probably never thought about the corners of your house.  You’ve probably never had to.  To be perfectly honest, I wouldn’t have a clue about them myself if it hadn’t been for a week I spent in New Orleans one winter on a college mission trip with the BCM re-drywalling a house.  Much to my surprise that experience came in handy last night since we had to reconstruct a corner in the bathroom prior to finishing the tiling of the tub/shower surround.  See… while we were beating the crap out of walls, I was really hoping to salvage the corner beading and just slide that cement backer board into place where the green board had been.  No dice.  Unfortunately the water damage had caused it to rust so badly, it just crumbled along with the wall.

There are two types of corners in your house: inside and outside.  Outside corners don’t mean they have to literally be outside.  It’s more like and innie/outie type of terminology.  Here’s an extremely detailed depiction for your viewing pleasure:

These outie corners can be found when a closet or bathroom juts out into a room, but you can also have them in an unframed doorway.  Also if you have one of those intricate double ceilings, you’ll find the same joint.  These are a real pain when drywalling because you can’t just plaster them.  Covering them in joint compound leaves them weak – think about how many times you brush up against one.  All the time right?  So they need to be reinforced.  This is done with metal corner beading.

The concept is simple.  It’s literally a metal corner.

You measure it.

Cut it.

Screw it into place and VOILA!

A corner.  Easy right?

Conveniently, the shape of the beading is designed to allow it to be completely masked when you apply joint compound.  Just apply some joint tape (or mesh tape like I had on hand) and smooth the joint compound along the corner.

After this has had a day to dry, sand it with a sanding block until smooth.  Now you’re ready to paint!  Or tile.