I’ll add after talking to my sister about this today (this is so riveting we’re talkaing about it days later hahahaha!) that we get level four walls standard in Virginia but they do an additional coat of the plaster stuff over the screw holes and taped seams fanning it out wider so it’s gradual. I think a heavy coat, sand, skim coat, sand. And everything looks super smooth and even without the whole walls being skimmed.

ok so i take that back – my sister just built a home up in syracuse (northwest of Layton if you know where that is) and they do have slight texturing on their walls in their basement. so i guess it’s a thing still. but even in our first reno too, we didn’t do any texture and it was not an issue of more money for it.