# Pinholes everywhere on hand troweled texture



## averagejoe (Oct 15, 2019)

Trying to figure out where to go with that. The homeowner is annoyed by many areas having a whole lot of pinholes. We brought drywall company back to show it and they insisted it is a nature of such finish. Nonetheless, they sent a guy to fill these. That guy spent maybe 4 hours on-site and after he left - many more areas are still having these pinholes - on picture you can see he missed the spot even where homeowner left the blue tape. Homeowner's expectations were that they will mark problematic areas and expect repairman to carefully inspect all surrounding areas for similar issues, but the repairman at best fixed only what was directly under the blue tape. My concern is that no matter how many times I call in punch work - there will be little to no desire to do it right, which will keep annoying drywall company and homeowner and I do not want to be between the fires.

Our contract states "visible from 6 feet", but many of such problematic areas are in places where the homeowner is always much closer to the surface - think walls in the restroom or narrow hallway - since the homeowner and their guests regularly gets much closer to the wall than these 6' - these pinholes areas annoys them.

Even with 6' exception, I am not sure if the job was done right and these pinholes should be acceptable, as they always will accumulate dust and eventually might become visible even on the ceiling.

What is yalls opinion? Are these pinholes are normal for that kind of finish? What could be a remedy? Do you guys normally fix these or fixing these usually makes things worse?


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## endo_alley_revisited (Aug 9, 2016)

Somebody needs to walk the job with a bright light and eliminate all of the pores in the mud by filling mud into them. Was this a skim out over paint? That will pock mark every time. Or did they put some dish soap in the mud to make it slicker? More pock marks and pores. Or did they use drying mud over hot mud that was still damp? Many causes of pores in the mud surface. Regardless, they must be removed.


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## averagejoe (Oct 15, 2019)

endo_alley_revisited said:


> Somebody needs to walk the job with a bright light and eliminate all of the pores in the mud by filling mud into them. Was this a skim out over paint? That will pock mark every time. Or did they put some dish soap in the mud to make it slicker? More pock marks and pores. Or did they use drying mud over hot mud that was still damp? Many causes of pores in the mud surface. Regardless, they must be removed.


It is new build and walls already painted - that's when we discovered these pinholes. So no, it wasn't skim coat over existing paint. What drywall company tried to do - put mud into some of these holes after walls were painted. Where they did it - it seemed to work, but they missed a lot of areas. And I wonder if there is an easier way to cover these now, instead of endlessly calling drywall company for this punch work (and painters each time after punch is done)

Also, your "they must be removed" means these pinholes are NOT something that should be expected from that kind of texture?


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## Shelwyn (Apr 10, 2015)

If they're visible by eye only from a REASONABLE distance they should fix it.
6 feet away or 6 inches away? Lmao 6 feet away wtf that's some bottom dollar finish you paid for hahaha


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## endo_alley_revisited (Aug 9, 2016)

"Also, your "they must be removed" means these pinholes are NOT something that should be expected from that kind of texture?"

This should not be considered an acceptable finish. Who did the original application? They did something wrong in the application process. I had a guy (about 20 years ago) who swore by using a little dish soap in his mud to theoretically make it seem smoother. He textured a house and left tens of thousands of little pores in his texture. These did not shoow until it was primed. As the light sanding it recieved filled the pores in with dust, until paint reavealed them. I had to pay a couple guys a couple days wages to fix the mess. After the fixing process, the texture looked fine. No pores or blemishes visible at three feet from walls. Anyhow, using modern quality topping or all purpose box mud for the texture, and a proper mixing paddle to mix the mud, you should not have pores in the texture. When texturing over a previously painted surface you will ALWAYS get pores in the texture. In this case, you must understand this ahaed of time and do what it takes to remedy th problem prior to paint application.


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## averagejoe (Oct 15, 2019)

Thank you for the explanation @endo_alley_revisited! Original texture was done by drywall sub (so they hang drywall first and later textured it, and then another sub came in to prime/paint - that's when it revealed itself, just like you said).


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