Hanging drywall is carpentry; finishing it is craft. The taping, mudding, and sanding stage is where a wall becomes flat — or where it picks up the waves, ridges, and shadowed seams you'll stare at for the next twenty years. Richmond Drywall provides professional drywall finishing and texturing across the Greater Richmond region, whether we hung the board or you did.
Finishing Services We Offer
- Taping & mudding — full three-coat finishing of new board: tape coat, fill coat, and finish coat, each feathered and sanded.
- Finishing DIY or builder-hung board — hung your own drywall? Smart move to stop there. We'll take it from screwed-up board to paint-ready walls.
- Level 5 skim coating — a full thin coat of compound over the entire surface for dead-flat walls under gloss paint, dark colors, or strong window light.
- Skim coating old walls — rough, patched, wallpaper-scarred, or previously textured walls skimmed back to smooth.
- Texture application — knockdown, orange peel, and other spray or hand textures applied evenly and consistently.
- Texture matching — blending new patches and additions into your existing texture so repairs and remodels disappear.
What the Finish Levels Actually Mean
Drywall finishing has an industry standard scale, and it's worth knowing when you compare quotes:
- Level 3 — for heavy textures. Not paint-ready.
- Level 4 — the standard residential finish: three coats on seams and fasteners, sanded smooth. Right for most rooms with flat or eggshell paint.
- Level 5 — Level 4 plus a skim coat over the whole wall. The only finish that looks perfect under raking light, high-gloss paint, or deep colors.
A contractor who can't tell you what level they're quoting is quoting Level “whatever's fastest.” We'll recommend the right level room by room — and won't upsell Level 5 where Level 4 will look identical.
Smooth Walls for Older Richmond Homes
A huge part of our finishing work happens in Richmond's older housing stock. Decades of paint, patches, wallpaper glue, and settling leave walls in the Fan, Church Hill, Bellevue, and Lakeside looking tired even when they're structurally fine. A professional skim coat is the affordable middle path between living with rough walls and gutting them — we coat, sand, and prime the existing surface back to smooth, modern flatness. The same goes for ceilings: if yours are textured, see our popcorn ceiling removal service.
Dust Control That Actually Works
Sanding is the messiest step in all of drywall — fine dust that finds every bookshelf in the house if it's not contained. We mask and seal the work area, use vacuum-assisted sanding where it makes sense, and leave the space clean. Finishing your walls shouldn't mean dusting your whole house for a month.
Get a Free Finishing Estimate
Whether you need new board taped, old walls skimmed, or a texture matched, call (804) 660-8925 or send us the details for a free written estimate. Pairing finishing with installation or repairs? One crew handles it all.