I had a contractor go a little haywire and now have a pile of cherry bed parts, previously ready for glue up and finishing, covered in drywall dust, drywall dust footprints, and worse, large amounts of hardened drywall mud glopped all over them. I have not yet taken this up with the contractor – I just discovered it – and have not tried to fix or even move the pile yet. Any idea how bad a problem I’m facing? Will this clean up easily with just a little effort or am I looking at discarding boards or somewhere in between?
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Replies
Shoudn't be much of a problem unless they dinged the pieces when stepped on. The mud should scrape right off. Don't work with cherry much, but you should be able to wire brush any mud out of the pores. Why don't you mess with'em and say everything is ruined and you want cash for all the material? Could be fun...
Just so happens that I tried a damp(water)rag on a piece of maple (similar to cherry) and it cleaned up very well. You may slightly raise the grain but a little 220 can fix that after a through drying. A damp alcohol rag should end with better results and a faster drying time with minimal, if any, grain raising. I would avoid a wire brush, cherry pores and grain are pretty tight and you don't want to brush into the softer spring growth.
All is not lost, an easy fix.
Work Safe, Count to 10 when your done for the day !!
Bruce S.
Edited 5/14/2007 12:16 pm ET by BruceS
Thank you both very much - luckily I saw these two before he got back. I had already taken several deep breaths and my imaginings were only worse. A little reassurance that many many hours of work are not lost helps calm me down before discussing the matter with him.
Water will take it right off. Additionally, since they probably got large globs of mud on your floor, those will scrape off without any effort if you first give them a spritz of water from a spray bottle. It only takes a bit to soften the dried mud.
The moist cloth will take care of it as others have said, but take it from a woman, dust them dry VERY well first and you will save yourself a lot of wet cleanup.Gretchen
I wouldn't let the contractor off the hook until you went through the entire finishing process. Cleaning off the visible mud and dust may not guarantee that problems won't show up once the finish starts going on. To be honest I would be surprised if a simple cleaning fully restores the wood to its former condition.
John W.
Anon,
In the 2 years since my mom's house flooded in hurricane Katrina (7 feet of water), I have become somewhat of an amateur expert on contractors. I will offer this advice:
Contractors suck! Good luck.
By the way, no offense meant, but were you expecting the sheetrock guy to bubble wrap your bed parts and cover them with a tarp? I masked off every tub, toilet, light fixture, etc to keep my sheetrock guys from ruining anything. It paid off. In general, contractors don't clean up after themselves, and they don't go out of ther way to protect any parts of your house that they are working on.
The sheetrock mud will come off, but I would not take any chances. As John said, I would be surprised if something didn't show up at the final stage of finishing. I would re-sand every part affected, maybe all of the parts, just to be on the safe side.
Good luck,
Lee
Lee, no offense taken - but I expected him to stay out of the single room on that floor where I put every item that had previously been in the other rooms where he was actually working, close the door, and stay the h#!! OUT. There were 5 minutes of work to do there, and he decided, contrary to directions and agreed scope of work, to stand on top of everything I had laboriously moved into that room to do those 5 minutes of work on the three days I was travelling on business and my wife was here to supervise. This was after I had said not to go into the room until he was done with the others and I had emptied it. And did I mention he did it while I was out of town? I do keep low expectations; he crawled under that bar on his belly. Did I mention he used my picnic dishes to mix and spread mud? No low expectations, however low, could not be unmet at that point.
I'll make sure I sand thoroughly AGAIN before any finish goes on. I loved sanding so much the first time; I'm sure it will be even more fun the second time.
I agree with John. Don't let the contractor off the hook until after you've finished the parts. Additionally, if you haven't already done so... some pictures of the mess might come in handy if the contractor balks.
Anon,
In that case, it sounds like I owe you an apology for the smart a$$ comments. Sounds like you went above and beyond trying to protect your stuff.
When all else fails, you can give old boy a good old fashion a$$ kicking. Always makes me feel much better than trying to reason with stupidity.
Cheers,
Lee
At the very least, show the contractor a copy of John's post (an "expert's" advice) and withhold enough from his final payment to cover the cost of replacement wood. Agree only to pay after the finish is on, dried and "cured" long enough for you to be satisfied that all is OK.
Edited 5/14/2007 10:46 pm ET by basset-hound
"I do keep low expectations; he crawled under that bar on his belly." Sounds to me like he dug a trench! Sheesh!! Good luck, hope it all works out.forestgirl -- you can take the girl out of the forest, but you can't take the forest out of the girl ;-)
The other option is to "treat" the entire surface. It would then yield a uniform appearance when finished.
Personally, I think that would be the direction I would take in your position. If your parts are to the sanding point, most all of the forming work has been accomplished. Even if you get new wood from the guy, you would still have to start over. And, while the residual of the mud might effect the absorption of your finish, if it is uniform, no one but you will be able to tell on the finished piece.
My main concern in this, and why I recommended waiting at least until the piece was finished, is that cherry changes color in reaction to both light and a number of chemicals.
Even after it is washed or brushed off, the sheet rock compound will leave behind chemicals invisible to the eye, probably alkalis, that will cause the cherry to change color unevenly. I can picture lighter or darker spots developing all over the piece in each spot where wet blobs of the compound sat on the wood. It might take several months for this to happen as the cherry naturally darkens from oxidation and light exposure.
John W.
Since the basis of most of the plasters, rocking compound, etc. is usually alkali, would it not be prudent to rinse the pieces with a dilute vinegar solution to help clean it?
Maybe, but I don't know for sure, and then you are adding another chemical to the wood that might have an effect, and the washing rinsing and sanding down would be quite a bit of work.
John W.
Thank you all for some excellent advice. Frosty: NO, he has not yet been paid in full. That's a relief, I tell you. I am going to try to clean the wood using the least invasive methods suggested here and proceed to more difficult ones only as needed. John, I often leave cherry in the sun a few hours on each side to jump-start the darkening process. I will certainly do that here to discover whether it seems to change color unevenly and in a manner related to the drywall dust. Thanks again for some great suggestions.
Try using compressed air with a non pressure limiting nozzle at 60 to 80 psi at an oblique angle to blast off what you can .Then very gentle scraping with air clearing the dust .Only sand as the last thing so you don't drive the dust into the grain.Remember that air at over 30 psi will penetrate your skin so be careful where you point the blast.Contary to others I think it will probably clean up .Hopefully he used hot mud rather than ready mix as it won't have stayed wet as long
With due respect to John and others warning of possible dire consequences from drywall dust, I wouldn't worry. Wipe it down with a dry cloth or hit it with an airgun first to remove as much of the loose dust as possible, and then remove the hardened "glops". Unless they were forced in by stepping on them while wet, they should just pop off easily. Use clean water and a soft rag to remove any remaining traces. (Do not use a wire brush unless you want to resurface the piece after you gouge it with the brush.) Drywall compound is pretty benign stuff and I've had plenty of occasion to finish wood building components that were burried in it with no ill effect including pieces of oak and walnut, which have open pores. My guess is that it's not much different than other similar compounds that are commonly used as pore fillers, such as pumice or plaster of paris.
Mike Hennessy
Pittsburgh, PA
I'm surprised this issue has not been raised:
HAVE YOU PAID HIM YET?
Frosty
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