Reveals are a great way to add interesting design elements to a bare wall — they give any room in which they’re installed a sleek, modern and unique quality. They announce to visitors of those rooms that, hey, the finisher who installed these things means business. And by creating this effect using Trim-Tex’s popular Architectural Reveal Bead, chances are, the final product will look far more expensive and time-consuming than it actually was for a pro finisher to get it done.
Here are a few tips on how to best handle using this eye-catching vinyl solution, both to wrap around corners and when coming to a full stop within the wall.
First off, Architectural Reveal Beads must be installed before any corner bead it will touch, to ensure accurate and clean transitions. When hanging your drywall (or cutting slots to place the Reveal Bead into), make sure to allow for a 1/16” gap between the drywall and the recessed section of the reveal, as seen above. This will grant you a little wiggle room to level the bead within the wall.
If you are working with corners and need to create a clean miter joint with the Reveal Bead, outfit your miter saw with a fine-tooth blade suitable for cutting softer materials. And then, when using the miter saw, an easy way to make sure you have full control over your bead is to cut a small strip of drywall, the same thickness as the wall you are installing to, and use it as a support for the reveal bead. With your support piece of scrap in place, firmly hold the reveal bead against the saw guide in a vertical position to provide a clean, crisp cut edge.
When transitioning a standard 90-degree outside corner into a reveal, make sure that all mud legs on both the intersecting reveal and corner bead are cut to 45-degree angles to allow a close fit for the mud bumps. Simply trim the mud legs using a pair of snips and check your corners by dry fitting the beads before final installation. Here, we’re using a standard Rigid Low Profile Corner Bead for our outside corner.
For a simple way to terminate a reveal mid-wall, take a scrap piece of Reveal Bead and cut along the inside edge of the recessed channel with a utility knife to create your stop piece. As seen below, trim the size to just slightly larger than the width of the installed reveal to create an end cap.
One more quick tip: when it comes time to start mudding, you’re not going to want compound to make its way into the recessed portion of the Architectural Reveal Bead — at worst, it’ll ruin the clean, crisp lines you’ve worked so hard to create, and at best, it’ll be a massive pain to clean up.
To eliminate this risk, we like to insert a length of rope into the reveal gap before we start mudding. Once your first coat of mud’s been applied, carefully rip that rope out for a satisfying maneuver we call “the rope trick.” Just repeat those steps for every coat of mud (how many coats you’ll need in the end depends on the level of finish your job calls for), and you’ll have clean edges around your reveals every time. Check out the video below to see how fun the rope trick can be to pull off, courtesy of the pros at White Hawk Drywall.