One Room Challenge Week 3
The Trials and Tribulations of Creating Smooth Surfaces
To nobody’s great surprise, my work for Week 3 of the Fall 2025 One Room Challenge took WAY longer than I expected it to. The task at hand was to skim coat the ceiling and one wall of the bedroom, smoothing out the existing orange-peel texture in preparation for glossy paint on the ceiling and a wallpaper mural on the wall. And while I had never done any skim coating before, it didn’t seem to be particularly difficult or complicated.
So what took so long? I had a few possible explanations:
A. I was being too much of a perfectionist, trying to get the drywall mud perfectly smooth with the skimming blade on the first go-around.
B. I’m an incredibly slow worker.
C. I needed to watch a few more YouTube videos to get a better idea of how exactly to do the job.
First steps: Thin out the drywall mud, and roll it onto a portion of the wall or ceiling.
The correct answer, as it turns out, was mostly A: I was being too meticulous with my skimming on the first coat, trying to eliminate every little line and bump. All I really needed to do was to follow up with a second coat, to make sure the existing texture was completely covered, and then to finish it off with some light sanding. Easy-peasy! Sort of. Not really.
Next, smooth out the surface with a skimming blade.
For others of you who, like me, aren’t skim coating experts, here’s the general procedure I followed: I thinned out the drywall mud with a little water, rolled it onto a section of the wall or ceiling, then smoothed it flat with a skimming blade. Once it dried overnight, I repeated the procedure with a second coat of mud. The final step, after more drying time, was to lightly sand everything with a 220-grit drywall-sanding screen.
It’s important to keep the blade clean, scraping off the excess mud often to ensure a smooth surface for skimming.
A smaller blade is helpful for troweling on the mud along the edges and corners where the roller can’t reach.
Other than focusing more on getting it finished than getting it flawless, here are a few additional tips that I learned along the way:
1. The consistency of the drywall mud should be thin enough to roll on easily, but not so thin that it’s drippy. I’ve heard it described as either a thick cake batter or a yogurt consistency, but essentially the idea is that you don’t want it sliding down the wall or falling on your head as you work.
2. Try to roll out the mud evenly, so there are no spots that are overly thick or thin. Use just enough to cover the surface. You don’t want it too thick or gloppy.
3. It’s difficult to get the mud all the way to the edges of the wall and ceiling with the roller, so I used a smaller drywall blade to spread some mud from the edges out, before smoothing over everything with my big 24-inch skimming blade.
4. Even light drywall sanding creates a lot of dust, so make sure to use a mask and eye protection, and keep the room sealed off as much as possible. (Yes, I know, I’m not wearing any protection in the photos, but I did put it on to actually finish the job.)
The final sanding step ensures that the surfaces are as smooth as possible.
Next up on the One Room Challenge agenda: painting! That’s a job that I have plenty of experience with, so the work should go a little quicker. On the other hand, the glossy ceiling paint could pose some unique challenges. I’ll forge ahead with my usual blind optimism, and we’ll see how it goes!
Keep following along as I transform our daughter’s old bedroom into a workout room, or an extra guest room, or … well, we still haven’t exactly decided what the final use of this room will be. We’ll get there eventually, hopefully in time for the final reveal.
You can find my weekly ORC blogs here on my website, with additional updates on my Instagram (@cancaninteriors) and my Facebook page (CanCan Interiors). Also be sure to check out the ONE ROOM CHALLENGE® website and @oneroomchallenge, where you learn more about this twice-yearly online event and see the fun and fabulous projects being undertaken by other One Room Challenge participants.
Here are all of the posts from current and previous weeks:
Week 1: Fall 2025 - Week 1 — ONE ROOM CHALLENGE®
