The mudding corner trick that cost me a full Saturday
I tried to tape and mud the inside corners of my basement bathroom the way I saw on YouTube, but the paper tape kept peeling off. After fighting with it for like 5 hours and getting air bubbles everywhere, I finally figured out I needed to use a corner trowel and pre-wet the tape. Took me until 7pm to get two corners done right. Anyone else had this paper tape nightmare or is it just me?
Oh man, "cursing at my bathroom ceiling corner" is too real. I tried that mesh tape once and it seemed to work okay for me, but then I got these little cracks showing up in the corners a few months later. My dad swears by pre-wetting the paper tape and using a real tight corner trowel, says that's the only way it'll hold in a bathroom with all the moisture. It is a pain in the neck to get right though. That pancake batter thickness tip is solid advice for sure.
The one thing that saved me on my last drywall project was switching to the mesh tape for corners instead of paper. I did the same thing you did, spent like six hours on a Saturday cursing at my bathroom ceiling corner, and finally a guy at the hardware store told me to try the mesh stuff with a setting compound instead of the premixed. It sticks way better and you dont have to pre-wet anything, just push it in with the corner trowel and it holds. Another thing that helped was making sure my mud was a little thicker than pancake batter, not too runny or it just slides off and bubbles up.