Taping & Texturing
Taping is the stage that decides how the whole room reads. Hang drywall well and you still have a wall covered in seams, screw dimples and corner beads. What turns that into a surface worth painting is the finishing — and it is the one part of a job that shows every shortcut the moment light hits it from the side.
It is also the work this business is named after. Ten years of it, across houses, apartments and offices around the Bay Area.
Level 4 and level 5 — what the difference actually is
Drywall finishing is graded on a standard scale, and the two levels that matter for finished rooms are 4 and 5. Contractors quote them casually and homeowners rarely get told what separates them.
Level 4 is three coats over the joints, fasteners and beads, sanded flat, with the rest of the board left as-is. It is the right call for most walls: flat and matte paints sit on it perfectly, and so does any real texture.
Level 5 adds a thin skim coat across the entire surface, not just the seams. That extra pass exists for one reason — to erase the difference in porosity and texture between bare paper and joint compound. Without it, that difference telegraphs through the paint as faint bands where the seams run.
You want level 5 when:
- The paint has any sheen — eggshell, satin, semi-gloss
- Big windows or wall-washing fixtures throw light across the wall at a low angle
- The wall is a long uninterrupted run with nothing to break up the eye
- The color is dark, which exaggerates everything underneath it
If none of those apply, level 5 is money spent on something nobody will see. We will tell you that rather than sell it to you.
Texture, applied by hand
Not every wall should be dead flat. Texture hides minor movement, matches what already exists elsewhere in the house, and is simply what a lot of Bay Area housing stock was built with.
We spray texture with a hopper gun and finish it by hand:
- Knockdown — sprayed, left to set, then flattened with a blade for a mottled, low-relief finish
- Orange peel — a fine spatter, the most common match on newer construction
- Skip trowel and hand patterns — for matching older or custom work
Matching existing texture on a repair is its own skill. A patch that is flawless but textured slightly differently is still an obvious patch. We match the pattern and the coarseness before we ever touch the paint.
Where taping usually comes up
- New construction and additions — the full run, from hanging board to paint-ready
- Remodels — after walls come down or go up, or after a full remodel opens up a space
- Repairs — water damage, impact damage, or patching after electrical and plumbing work
- Ceilings — including removing old texture and refinishing flat
Repairs are worth calling about even when they feel too small to bother a contractor with. A single patched ceiling seam is a short visit; the same seam ignored through a wet winter is not.
What it looks like while we are there
Taping is a dusty trade, and pretending otherwise helps nobody. So the honest version:
Sanding produces fine dust that travels. We seal off the work area and cover what stays in the room. There are several coats, and each one has to dry before the next goes on, so the work comes in passes rather than one continuous stretch — expect quiet days between them. We tell you which days those are up front, and if something moves, you hear it from us before you notice it yourself.
If you are living in the house while it happens, say so when you call. It changes how we stage the work, not whether we take it.
Across the Bay Area
We take taping and texturing work in San Rafael, Tiburon, Mill Valley and across Marin, in San Francisco, and out through Berkeley, Orinda, Walnut Creek and Vallejo. No job is too far in the Bay, and none is too small to call about.
Call and describe the room — the size, the paint you have in mind, whether it is new work or a repair. That is usually enough to give you a straight answer on what level of finish it actually needs.