Is/can dry wall be the last step before painting a wall?

I was watching a decorating show and they said that dry wall was an easy solution to replacing wood paneling, which I have in my bedroom, because once you install it you can paint right over it. Recently, my living room was redone and we had drywall but instead had someone spackle the whole room before we painted.


Is this the absolute necessary way to go or can I skip the spackling?Is/can dry wall be the last step before painting a wall?
First of all, they use joint compound, not spackle. 2 very different things. The joints must be taped, covered with 3 coats of joint compound, or mud. Each coat of mud is applied further out from the joint itself in order to blend it into the rest of the wall. The edges are sanded to ';feather'; the joint. Screws are covered on the second and third coat of mud. Hope this helps.Is/can dry wall be the last step before painting a wall?
Think about this; The drywall is installed with deeply set nails/screws, and all of the corners and ceiling joints are raw cut sheetrock.





If you just paint over the sheetrock without filling in the nail/screw head indents and corners with spackle, then you will see all of those imperfections and it will not only look unfinished, it will look like you do not know what you are doing. Have you ever seen a wall with open cracks between the 4x8 sheetrock sheets, indents from nails/screws, and unfinished ceiling and corner joints? I did not think so.





Do it correctly or do not bother at all. Spackle and sand the walls smooth. Prime and paint.





P.S. Correction: I used the word spackle instead of joint compound.
You have to fill in and sand the cracks between the drywall sheets, but beyond that all you need to do is use a good drywall primer and paint.