Oh man, I gotta push back on this a little. Don's advice about "working the knife not the mud" sounds nice and all, but in practice it's just a clever way to say "I've been doing this so long it looks easy." I've seen guys who talk like that, and half the time they're just gatekeeping with a folksy saying. Fast forward to 2024 and I watched a drywaller on YouTube finish a corner in two passes with a 10-inch knife and a halogen light, no preaching needed. Plus, if Don was using a 6-inch blade for inside corners in 1997, that's a recipe for a fat mud ridge every time - you need a corner box or at least a 4-inch knife to get into the angle right. Mentors are great but sometimes they just teach you their old bad habits, you know?

Yeah that's a real thing. It's like when you're learning to drive and someone finally yells at you for not checking your blind spot, and suddenly you never forget to do it again. We get stuck in our own little ways of doing stuff and we don't even realize we're messing up until someone who knows better just lays it out flat. It's humbling but it sticks with you way more than a polite suggestion ever would. I think most people need that kind of blunt truth at least once to really level up at something. It's like a shortcut to learning that you can't get from a YouTube video or a book.

Man that's rough, I've had a tent go down in bad weather before and it's no joke paddling out in the dark like that. Hope your buddy made it back okay.

The house was built in 2003, not 2015, so the compound from back then was totally different (way less water in it).

A pint is like two cups of water, not exactly catastrophic.