Still Floating the Drywall

I had no idea what a long process this would be to get the walls level. The old wood studs in our kitchen were quite uneven, so if you place a level across the drywall sheets, there are recesses in areas as big as ¼” that need to be filled in. I’ve been putting on joint compound almost every day for over a week & I’m still nowhere near done. Looking at it, the changes are so subtle it looks like I’m slacking, but my achy neck & shoulders tell me otherwise. Yesterday my contractor came out and showed me how to use the hawk & trowel for the large sections of walls we need to skim coat. He did about 80% of the one wall & I tried a few passes. After he left, about 10 minutes into my 1st attempt on my own, I got a cramp in the palm of my hand. My hand barely fits around the grip of the trowel. Anyway I worked through the pain and attempted two more spots before I went back to the mud pan & 10” trowel for filling in spots on the ceiling where we patched in drywall. I just didn’t have enough confidence working with the hawk & trowel over my head, probably would have ended up with more mud in my hair than on the ceiling.

Old plaster wall we skim coated

My first attempt with the hawk & trowel

Ceiling patch before

Detail of ceiling after filling gap when instaling the corner bead

Ceiling after anothe layer of fill