OK, working on a bathroom right now. The contractor called in a sub to do the drywall work. The hanging went fine; the problem occurred when the sub sent over an inexperienced guy to do the taping.
First off, he didn't embed the tape quite well enough, which was a factor in the ensuing problem - when he went to sand the first coat, he sanded too far and "frayed" the paper tape. Badly.
At that point, the contractor fired the sub and called me in to clean up the mess.
In this case, I am afraid a skim coat thick enough to avoid "scraping the fuzzies" will show as a sizeable bulge in the wall - and it is being painted with a white semi-gloss, so very little help in hiding the imperfections there.
I am thinking I should spot prime the frayed tape with Guardz and then perhaps I can get a thinner skim coat on there without having the "fuzzies" in the tape ruin the skim's surface... the only other course I can see would be to cut out the bad tape and attempt to re-tape those areas.
Any better ideas (or confirmation of my supposition) would be welcomed. Thanks!