Final drywall prep and priming

With the recessed lights in, and the final layer of drywall mud applied, it was time to get the joints sanded and smoothed out. 

Knowing how much of a mess construction can be, particularly drywall dust, we've had temporary plastic sheet "doors" installed in the 2 doorways leading to the rest of the house.  In addition, I saw great reviews on Amazon for a product called Sand & Kleen.  Basically, it's a special sanding head (uses regular sanding screens), hooked to a hose that's hooked to a bucket of water, that's hooked to another hose going to your shopvac.  Drywall dust gets sucked into the the bucket of water where around 95% of the dust ends up as sludge in the bottom of the bucket. 

Supposedly, if you're good at drywall, you have to sand very little.  Unfortunately, I'm not.  I did the majority of the "heavy" sanding with the Sand & Kleen, and it captured the vast majority of the dust that came off the walls.  Even with my little 1 gallon Shop Vac, it was strong enough to keep the sanding handle stuck to the wall.  I emptied the 3 gallon bucket twice, each time it had about 3/4" of solid sludge on the bottom. 

Here's a cool panorama of our kitchen post sanding.  There's some weird artifacts from stitching the individual pictures together.

I did the final smoothing with dry sanding sponges, so there was some dust there, but not nearly as bad as it would have been.  Once it was done and cleaned up, and the existing painted walls scuffed (for better paint adhesion), it was time to prime.

Priming was scary to me.  Not being skilled in drywall, priming to me has the finality of, "all of your mistakes in the drywall will be forever displayed here."  In particular, the U-shaped area of the ceiling where I got "lazy" and just filled in the missing areas from the soffit, rather than pull the whole ceiling down and deal with the mess of insulation.   I suppose if it was really that bad, I could go back and do another layer of drywall.  Thankfully, I think it came out pretty good.

The mold resistant drywall behind the sink took 2 good coats of primer.  I used Zinsser 123, which according to the can, would stick to just about anything.  After getting paint on my hands and trying to get it off once it dried, I believe it.  All told, it took about 1 3/4 gallons to prime the kitchen walls and ceiling. 

Next up is painting.  Our color is Seasoned Salt from Behr, which oddly isn't on their website.