Drywall – When finishing drywall, is it a common practice not to mud the bottom of horizontally-hung drywall

drywallmudding

I hung drywall horizontally in my bedroom and hired a company to mud and tape it so that I could prime and paint. As you know, drywall sheets are recessed along the edges in order to hold drywall compound. Well, they did not mud along the bottoms of any of the walls where the drywall sheets recess. Shouldn't they have even so much as applied a sloppy layer of mud to fill the recess so that my base moulding would have something flat to be attached to? Otherwise, when I go to put on the base moulding, it's going to dip inward.

Here's a picture of a corner in my room where the bottoms are entirely unfinished. It seems like the bevelled edges along the bottoms of these sheets should have been filled in to provide a flat, vertically level surface to hold moulding.

enter image description here

Best Answer

Typically, drywall sheets hung horizontally are hung with the upper full sheet first against the ceiling, cut bottom sheet last. This is so you will have an indent at the top to tape and mud. Unless your wall is exactly 8 feet tall, the cut of the bottom sheet is at the floor, thus no indent. Even if you have an indent at the very bottom against the floor, it is only about 2 inches wide. Common baseboard is 3 1/2 to 4 1/2 inches wide and will bridge this indent and is nailed mid and high. We have never put mud on the very bottom of a sheet, even it the indent is there. I suppose if your baseboard is very narrow, you may have to ask the mudders to fill that area, but that is very uncommon and would be a special request.