10 Ways to Fix a Hole in Drywall

in this video I'm going to show you 10 different ways to patch a hole in drywall and we're going to do it right now [Music] in many of my videos I like to go over options of how to do things there's not always just one way to do something especially in construction there's different names for things there's different products there's different circumstances and that's kind of what I want to show you in this video I'm going to show you 10 different ways to patch a hole in drywall so step one of this video was to build a wall this is a temporary wall for demonstrational purposes I put studs up I put the drywall up screwed it in mudded over the screws with two coats of mud sanded it primed it and painted it and I made it look as good as I possibly could for the purposes of this video and now what I'm going to do is smash a bunch of holes in it and use all these different methods and these different products to try and make it look as perfect as possible when I'm done and then you can choose which one you like best or which one works for the circumstances is that you have and by the way I am not sponsored by any products or any brands that I use in this video because I'm going to tell you the ones that I like and I want to be honest so no sponsorships no nothing just putting this stuff to the test letting you know what I think and then seeing what you think so next step let's smash a bunch of holes in this wall foreign so now we have our holes one through five six through ten the first and second way I'm going to show you how to patch is pretty common practice there are slight differences between the two of them so I'm going to show both of them to you if I had to give a name to this type of patch I'm going to call this one finding studs because that's exactly what you want to do first thing you do move this stuff out of the way any of this drywall I got messed up and I want to take my tape measure sometimes you can go in here and feel where the stud is and see which one's closer feels like this one is closer so I'm going to bring my tape in here and just try and get it as straight as possible there we go now I can see right here is three and a quarter inches so now I can take my tape out and Mark three and a quarter right here and I know that that is the side of this stud and then I do the same thing on this side you just want to pick a spot in the drywall three inches is right here so then I can take my tape and Mark three inches and I know that that is the edge of this stud typically your studs will be 16 inches apart they should be anyways that is kind of the standard but you might have blocking and and whatever else for and for the purposes of this video I put these very close so the next thing you want to do is find the center of each of these studs inch and a half is the standard stud if you're in an older house it could be a true two by four two inches but I'm gonna go three quarters of an inch because that should be the center this is an inch and a half wide stud so this is the mark that I want to use and then over here one two three quarters so that right there is the center of this stud and that is the center of that stud so I want to measure in between right here from that Center Mark to this Center Mark nine and three quarters looks like it's gonna work and I want it at least and go a little bigger than this I go a little Beyond because some of this could be damaged as well so we'll go five inches double check this by nine and three quarters so now I'm going to take a sheet of drywall you can usually buy these in two foot by two foot panels if you don't want to buy a full sheet nine and three quarters I'm gonna mark it like this you can also use a t-square or whatever you might have and then five inches and if you don't know how to cut drywall it is really really easy all you need is a utility knife follow this line just like that just cut through the paper on that side and tap the back side and it breaks just like this and then you just cut the paper on this side and there's my patch if you're doing a larger patch it's a good idea to take a level to plumb a line right down with the stud the stud should be Plumb therefore you could stay right in the middle of that stud this is a small enough patch where I shouldn't have a problem with that I can just take this and line it up put it on those marks just like that just make sure the patch is covered you just mark this and now what you're going to be cutting out is this exact shape and I'm just going to make a mark right here with an arrow saying that this needs to go up this way so that this patch matches up and now all I got to do cut these lines all you need to cut these is same utility knife you can use a multi-tool if you want an oscillating tool or even a Sawzall if you wanted it takes a little more effort with a utility knife but you can definitely get it done minimal tools don't worry about cutting past like this you're going to tape and mud this anyways look at that studs see there's a screw right here I can take that out now you just make sure this is clear cleaned up see if our patch fits perfect something that I never really do unless there's an edge like this where the paper is starting to kind of come out like this is the taper this right here and it's not a bad idea that way it makes sure that mud gets in here you can do it to this piece and the wall if you wanted but not a necessary step in my opinion I'm going to use inch and a quarter drywall screws and a screw gun you don't need a screw gun you can do this with a hand screwdriver you don't need a drywall gun especially if you're just doing one little patch I'm going to go in each corner [Music] and the proper way to install drywall screws is to just sink the head in just past this paper this is too far out I want to sync it just a little bit more foreign like that just don't break the paper and make sure it's sunk in just enough now if you're interested and you think you're going to do a lot of repairs they have a bit that you can attach to a screw gun this is like a dimpler and put your screw in here and it'll automatically stop when you are in the right place with your screw [Music] kind of like that oh at this point a lot of people will mud and tape this one thing that people forget is especially over here where you saw there was a drywall screw there may only be drywall screws every 16 inches so over here this old drywall is going to be unsecured to that stud so what can happen is this wall can flex and that new mud that we put in there can crack so I like to go around and secure the old drywall back to the studs just in case [Music] foreign foreign let's talk about joint compound and drywall tape I'm going to try and make this kind of a condensed version because I could go on forever about this but this might give you some ideas what you might want to use first thing paper tape it is industry standard it's got a little line in the middle to use in corners and it can be used on flat seams as well next is something that I used to use all the time and I don't use it anymore it kind of makes me sad because this is very cool tape this is a mesh tape and it is self adhesive so you can just put it on the wall and do all your joints and then go over it afterwards but I've had some bad experiences with it people say that you can use hot mud with this and be okay you just don't want to use this kind of mud which I'll talk about the mud in a little bit but I'm just done using it completely what I found now that I really like is called fiber fuse tape this is made of tiny glass fibers fiberglass squished into a drywall tape the company claims that this is 76 percent stronger makes a 76 percent stronger joint because the mud will go into All These Little Fibers and fuse everything together and it's super super thin and I've had really a really great experience with it so this is all I ever use anymore next up is joint compound blue top and Green Top is what they call it this one happens to be the dust control I like to use this for my first and second coat after the tape coat it's really good for finishing it's really easy to work with it's already pre-mixed in the bucket and ready to go I don't do my tape coat with that though I like to use Durabond buyer beware if this is your first time doing a patch like this or you're pretty new to it you might not want to use this this is a powder that you mix with water and it has a chemical cure and this stuff dries like concrete or cures like concrete so if you put too much of this on you'll never sand it off without tearing the drywall apart now this easy sand this is easy sand five they have 20 90. I've talked about this a lot in my videos If you want to get a drywall repair done quickly this is what you want to use this is another type of chemical cure it's a powder that you mix with water and it can dry very quickly you can get a patch done within a day this is easy sand 5 which means you have five minutes of working time to get the patch done so buyer beware on this too if you think it's going to take longer than that or if you're in no hurry then feel free to use this stuff it doesn't matter what you use for joint compound the only difference is that the hot mud or the stuff you have to mix will cure a lot quicker and you can get the job done a lot faster my only suggestion is to add a little water to the pre-mixed stuff just to make it a little easier to spread I have a six inch taping knife and I'm going to be using this I believe this is a 2 12 inch knife and I'm just going to use this kind of to hold the mud that's how I like to do it but you don't need this for sure make sure there's no edges sticking up if there is you can cut them with a knife pretty flat I'm going to do my tape coat really really simple just grab some mud and cover all these seams get it into that crack right there you just want to have enough mud behind the tape and then you can take your tape lay it out like this pull your knife like that and then you can cut the tape with a knife or what I like to do is just rip it like that and I'm going to take a little bit more mud and go over this part of the tape just a little stick there take another piece try and get the center of the tape right where the crack is hold it right here and rip it do the same thing right here add a little bit of mud another piece of tape right here rip it there's plenty of mud a piece of tape and rip it and then I want to go along with your knife you might have to hold the tape like this and drag the knife and get all the excess mud out from behind the tape and just kind of scrape this nice and tight something like that I'm going to put my first coat this is a tape coat the first coat is the one that covers the tape I'm going to put it on right now some people like to let this dry completely before they cover the tape it's totally up to you and as far as techniques on how to do this stuff there's so many different ones and all I can say is the more you do it the better you'll get at it and you'll find your own technique I'm just going to show you how I do it and I'll try and explain it as best as I can what I like to do on the first coat is just cover the tape a nice thin coat but you definitely want to make sure you cover the tape and I'm going to fill this whole thing right in so I'm going to go from about here to hear and fill all this in your goal is to make this as flat as possible and taper this transition to the original wall so that it doesn't even look like there was a hole in there so I'm gonna just grab my mud I'm gonna put plenty of mud on here you see as you this those air bubbles go away and this is why I like to have my 12 inch knife so that I can lightly go over this and try and taper this whole thing you want to always keep whatever you're using clean so I'm wiping my trowel down as I'm using it to smooth and I'm putting more pressure towards the wall right here and less pressure up here to try and get that tapered and then I'm just taking off mud in the middle to try and make this somewhat flat then I'll take my six inch knife makes it a little difficult with this hole right here and then I'll put more pressure here less pressure up top clean that up and do the same on the top and on the sides so that's a pretty good first coat so now we're going to let that dry completely and the first coat is done I have a light shining from the side because that is the best way to see this patch and you can see it doesn't look great it might look better than this or Worse depending on how much experience you've had with this but it might look something like this the key to doing multiple coats is to make sure that each one is completely dry before you put another one on top of it and the other key to multiple coats is you want to just take a taping knife and kind of scrape this down in between coats and make sure there's no extra little dried up pieces that are going to fall off in your mud and make it so you end up dragging them across the surface that will mess up your smooth finish it'll drive you nuts all right second coat is basically the same thing that we did here the more coats and the thinner the coats you do the better this is going to look you can always sand it but trust me you don't want to put on too much and sand more than you have to because sanding is not fun let's load this up same way I'm going to leave this light here because you can really see how it looks and see all these bubbles that's because I did not mix this with water or anything this is the pre-mixed stuff and it tends to do that but as you start to wipe it like this that starts to go away and you don't have to finish with the 12 inch trowel you can just do this what I'm doing with the six inch let's try and get it as smooth as possible I'm going to call that second coat done second coat is dry I could always do another one over this to make it even better but I think this is going to come out pretty good so I'm going to use a sanding block to sand this down this is an extra fine these are usually about 220 grit and I'm going to use a mask when I sand this just don't want to breathe this dust in basically just sand it until it's smooth I'm going to take off more in the middle and then very carefully kind of taper this Edge just like I've been doing with the mud and see how it comes out just want to get this roughness out of here get these lines out of here there's a little bump right here and then be careful around here and just barely sand just to make it smooth all right so I've sanded this and if this was me I would do another coat this is nice and smooth but as I run my hand over it I can still feel the hump where I patch this in and if you get real close you can see I just barely hit the tape right here I sanded off too much mud trying to get that hump to go away so this is something that can happen like I said I would do a third coat so on this one that's what I'm going to do okay it's all sanded out and the edges are feathered like this and now I don't have to go into all that detail on the next ones because you kind of want to apply that to any drywall patch that you do make it smooth make it flat and feather the edges our first patch is done it looks awesome but before I prime it or paint it I want to do all of these and then I'll Prime and paint the entire wall so we can see how they did moving on to the second patch this is another common practice patch the way I'm going to do it and I'm going to show you two different techniques to doing it and I'm going to show you some different techniques with the taping of it but the very first step is to get a measurement just a little bigger than this three inch by four inch maybe we'll do a four by four and you can cut it from the front here too there's another little tip and then if you have drywall hang it over like this you can clean this up a little bit just like this try and square that up or you can use the side of the knife like this Next Step I'm just going to hold this piece of drywall like this right over that hole again I'm going to mark that Arrow and then I'll go around my pencil and then I can cut this out so the last one I cut with a knife I'm going to make this one easier and cut it with my oscillating tool easier and faster [Music] way easier now I'm going to take a piece of scrap wood and hold it like this enough where I can get screws into the original wall and screws into the patch put one here then one on the bottom and then I would do this same thing on this side and put the patch in but as an alternative I want to show you as many different ways as possible I bought these these drywall repair Clips you might want to use these if you don't have scrap wood laying around and you don't want to buy a whole 2x4 or whatever the case or in some cases if you're using 5 8 drywall this may be meeting fire code whereas a block of wood won't but it depends completely on where you live and what you're doing what the purpose is for this repair so on this side I'm going to use these clips they just go in like this and put one here one on the bottom they're just going to fit there's a note four inch probably the minimum amount you want to go with these and then you take screws and hold them about three quarters from The Edge try and catch one of those holes in the clips that was my fear that I wouldn't catch it again never used these before try again [Music] there we go got it that time top yep that one didn't catch okay now those screws are in now we can take my patch pop it in there it sits flush here so that's good and then put a screw here sink it in one screw in each corner again you want to try and get the screw in one of those holes here [Music] got it now I can grab these tabs and you kind of Wiggle them until they break off that so now you don't have these tabs in your way so it's basically the same as this just a different method now there's some drywall that it's kind of loosey-goosey right here just want to cut any of that out of here and then I can take a hammer and where those spots missed messed up the drywall a little bit just want to get it back down as flat as I can now I'm going to do the tape coat on here I'm going to do the same exact thing that I just did but I'm going to show you a couple different methods to start I'm going to do one piece of tape at a time so I'm going to get that drywall mud in there like that and then I'm going to put a piece of tape on and I'm going to use Fiber fuse tape because I'm talking a big game about it so I might as well show you what it's all about I'm going to put it about there and the thing I love about it is it's so thin that you don't need a ton of mud underneath it with the paper tape if you end up not having enough drywall mud underneath it you could cause a bubble but with this stuff the mud as you do this it'll go into those fibers and start coming out this side and it is much thinner than with the paper tape so now I got one piece and some people don't overlap the tape I just like to do it because I feel better about this not cracking anywhere here with the two pieces of tape don't meet so I'm just going to do that the same way on this one this side piece of tape right here and the theory behind doing one piece at a time is that you can get the tape nice and tight and not have to worry about messing it up if you go this way with the paper tape this piece typically can get messed up pretty easy by swiping it like that here if you're doing a lot of this fiber fuse tape I would recommend wearing gloves because the fibers start coming off when they're hands and it can get annoying so now I can do a coat over this second and third coat is done it's all sanded out just like this one the cool thing about these patches is that doesn't matter if you have a hole the size of a dime or a one foot or a two foot hole you can use this method for any size basically and you can spread the mud and taper it out as much as possible to make the wall look absolutely perfect there is something that you might run into when working with this it's a problem with your tape bubbling so let me show you how to fix that just in case it happens to you here's an example of bubbling tape on this right here I purposefully did not put enough mud behind this tape and you might do this accidentally where it leaves a little bubble it can be more pronounced than this but as you sand it you'll be able to tell actually this is a good one because that is the center of the tape so that line is showing but you can just barely tell that there's no mud behind that this didn't stick this will bubble out and as you paint it it just won't look good so to fix this what you want to do is take a knife and cut out past that bubble make sure you go far enough where you are going to have mud behind the tape and then you can reach back there pull this out and you can see bare drywall right here now if this is a seam right here you are going to want to use tape again but if not you can just mud this in another tip when you go to touch up stuff when you have mud going on top of mud to fix mistakes it can be hard to see so one thing you can do is add just a little bit of chalk you do not need a lot I like to use blue chalk because it's less likely to show through on the Finish coat after you paint it if you use red chalk especially if you do a lighter color it can show through so just make sure you mix that up good now when you go to do your patch you'll be able to see that it doesn't even have to be very dark but you'll definitely be able to tell that there's a patch right here that you need to sand out before you paint and unfortunately when you cut out tape like this you're going to have to do more than one coat now we're moving on to the next patch and since I'm making up names for these patches not sure if they actually have technical names but making up names is always fun so for this one I'm going to call this tapeless or winged drywall the first step with this is the same first step with the last one I just want to get an idea of how big I want to cut this out because I'm going to cut it out the same way I'm going to say four inches by four inches will work but I'm also going to add four inches to each measurement so I'm actually going to cut this piece of drywall eight inch by eight inch and I'm going to show you why now the next step is to flip this drywall and I'm going to mark two inches all the way around this on the back side this Frame and square is two inches wide so I'm just going to use this mark this and you may have an idea of where this is going but if you don't this is something that I've seen and I've actually never tried before so I wanted to try it out and see how it worked now I'm going to cut the back side here this and then I'm going to break the drywall snap it like that and then I'm going to carefully peel the drywall like this so that this paper is left and that paper is going to act as the drywall tape that's why I'm calling this tapeless or winged it's got a little wingy I'm going to do that all the way around well already encountered a problem with it I guess you got to be more careful let's give that a shot next I'm gonna kind of fold these down I'm going to mark this just like I did on the last one hold this over my patch and make sure it's lined up I'm just going to Mark around the actual piece of drywall so I know where to cut it's okay that I'm running into my other patch here because this is sanded and basically this is just acting as the the finished wall wood so now I cut that square out [Applause] good let's test fit it okay if I was doing this I would probably add a block like that patch but I've seen it where they just use this I think it's good for maybe a smaller pair we'll see how it holds up so now that I know that the piece fits I'm going to mix up some mud and get ready to install it make sure all my edges are cleaned up okay okay make sure to put enough on just like with regular tape and put our patch in okay let's see how this goes a little ripping right here this tape ripped a little bit but we're gonna go right over it with mud so I I got it as good as I think I possibly could now I'll do a first coat over all this all that one worked out really well I was able to do two coats and sand it out and it looks great and I don't know if maybe I did a good job with the mud or maybe that's a pretty good patch because that paper is really thin it got really close I've never done it before but I don't know I might do it again the only problem that I see is that the paper is really thin so you saw it started tearing apart but the important place for that paper to be is over the seam where the pieces of drywall meet we'll take a closer look at all of these towards the end of the video when they're all patched in but now we're going to go on to the next one and this one I'm going to call just tape as you could probably guess by the name I'm calling this I am just going to use tape one of the downfalls of this patch that I can see is that you've do not want to do a very big patch but the key to this one is you want to try and get some mud tucked in there kind of like that make sure you have plenty of it it's gonna spill into the wall you could put something on the back side I've seen people put insulation in there against the other sheet of drywall on the back just to hold it in place you can do that if you want I'm not a huge fan of this one I've done it before but it's not my favorite there's one piece try and pull this a little tighter on the back side foreign and then mud over that piece of tape again trying to fill in that hole a little bit here it's okay if it's not completely filled up and pull it tight this get it as tight as you can and now you can put a coat over that so with my sloppy first coat on here you can kind of see the reason that I'm not a huge fan of this method it's a little hard to see on camera but if you look from the side that tape tends to bubble out a lot of the times because it gets wet and it has no backing to it so it's not sticking to anything back there so it starts to bulge out this way so you kind of gotta hope that it doesn't come out too far where you can mud it and sand it and make it flat I like to check it just before it cures all the way and actually it doesn't look bad at this point I like to just carefully take a taping knife and just scrape off just about that much so that will take the bubble away and if you're careful you won't hit the tape and now this is a more flat surface to do your second coat this one is all set I only had to do two coats on this one too and it's a slightly smaller patch and it came out pretty decent I ended up being able to get rid of that bubble so not bad moving on to number five this is going to be your standard store-bought patch and there's a bunch of different kinds out there let me show you the three that I picked up three different brands three different variations on the same idea the store-bought patch you can get this at your local hardware store or online this one is an anvil four inch patch basically all it is is a very thin sheet of metal with a mesh over it it's self-adhesive you peel it you stick it you do joint compound over it just like we've been doing that's a 4x4 they have all different sizes like this one's a six by six this one's a fiber tape self adhesive as well repair patch only difference is it's not a thin sheet of metal it is a thin wire mesh with mesh over that stick it to the wall mud it sand it same deal this one straight Flex Perma patch is really cool this one is an eight by eight and what you can do with this is it has all of these kind of guides for receptacles and lights so say you cut a light out too big or receptacle too big then you can cut what it's actually supposed to be the size that it's supposed to be and put this on the wall and mud around it to fix that whoopsie but it can also be used just for a hole in this one you could use for a big hole this is not self-adhesive so you would use this a similar way to just the tape you mud the wall then you put this on then you mud over that and couple coats and sand it but what I'm going to use because they're all kind of the same idea is this four inch self-adhesive patch so let's see how it goes here's the patch you want to make sure that this metal is going to cover the hole completely you could put it at a diamond like this this one's kind of long that could work but I think this will cover all you do is peel this and stick it easy peasy now we mud it I was able to just do two coats on this one and it came out really good moving on and now the moment you've all been waiting for I'm going to show a patch where you don't need to buy a sheet of drywall you don't need a bucket of joint compound you don't even need tools all you need is an all-in-one wall repair patch kit this is a Dap and it comes with everything that you're going to need so the kit comes with spackling this is the dry time indicator kind where it goes on pink and it dries white apparently depending on the scenario it can dry as quick as 25 minutes that's pretty cool it has a patch this is a five inch we'll do holes up to four inches because you need a little bit here to stick to the wall you have your putty knife for the spackling and it even has sandpaper and it's got instructions too but you don't need that you got this video well to start just like all the other ones make sure you don't have any drywall sticking out sand it if necessary but clear off all the dust afterwards I'm looking good now this is not self-adhesive so if it was me I would take the spackling and just put it on the wall like this but I am going to follow the instructions to a t with this stuff so what they tell you to do is take the spackling and apply it to the back side of the patch so I'm going to take my spackling and I'm going to hold this patch right here and okay I'm going to try and get it on the back side here that's interesting it's like it doesn't want to stick to it I'm going to load up the back there we go this is what they tell you to do in the instructions okay now I'm going to grab it and make sure that it's covered flip it and then push it into place try and squeeze some of that spackling out and get it as close to the wall as possible and now we can go over this with more spackling and I'm going to try and do the same thing feather it out blend it in might have to do a couple coats I'm curious to see how this stuff sets up a little harder to do with a small putty knife that's okay at least you didn't have to buy one right the spackling is kind of just a little thicker the consistency is a little thicker than joint compound it's not too too bad to work with see if I can smooth it out using this two inch putty knife yeah that's as good as I could get a little harder to work with than joint compound and a six inch knife but we're going to make it look as good as we possibly can so we'll let that dry okay so on the package it says 25 minutes to cure It also says it depends on the circumstances we are in a basement it might be a little more humid and I did put it on kind of thick because I'm trying to smooth this out this has been four hours and you can see in the middle it is a little wet still but I'm ready to second coat this if you look close you can see the outline of the patch and you can even see the holes on the bottom here on the top you can't maybe if you have textured walls this would be easy but it's definitely not a quick patch I was hopeful but definitely not a quick one all right I'll see what I can do with this I'll start to try and carefully scrape this oh boy well this stuff is not very oh and it can be pushed right in I guess it's just not very strong let me just get the high stuff off I'll do another coat and then I'll let it dry overnight and maybe it'll be more solid than this we'll see and you know what if you don't want to do it this much you think it's good enough with a you know without tapering it that's fine I'm just trying to make it look as good as possible maybe people just want to buy this patch patch it up real quick they're tired of looking at a hole and they don't want to put a lot of effort in and just make it good enough for them and that's totally fine but the whole point of this is to try and make this wall perfect at the end of this video okay well I think I have surprised myself that looks pretty good in my opinion we'll see what it looks like when it's dry okay so second coat I let dry for a full day 24 hours so let's take a look I'll start by just kinda checking how hard this stuff is there's some bubbles not the best finish in the world it scrapes off really easy okay so let's check this and that is still flexible so I can push that in still I guess that's just how it is that's okay for the patch it is it is what it is right so I'm just going to carefully scrape down the high spots to make it easier to sand and I'll try and make a second coat look good and if I can't I'll do a third coat remember I'm only using the tools that they gave me in this package and then I'll use my tiny piece of 100 grit sandpaper and see what I can do so second coat all sanded out did my best to make it smooth and I'm actually really impressed there's some minor imperfections in it but overall not bad I'm going to clean up this putty knife and I am actually going to do a third coat there is plenty of putty left in here or spackling left in here which I was worried that this wasn't going to be enough but it looks like it is so I'm going to clean this putty knife up and I'm gonna do one more really thin coat over this whole thing to get all those imperfections out and I'll sand it out and we should be good to go okay I did my best that's as good as I'm gonna get it and honestly that looks pretty good and as a note this stuff says that you don't have to Prime this you can just paint it so that's good to know we're not going to paint any of these yet until we're done next up is another all-in-one repair kit this is a high strength large hole repair kit from 3M let's see how this one does so this one is a little more unique it has a different design where this actually goes inside of the wall and this is double-sided tape and that sticks to the back side of the wall there's a little piece of mesh tape I'll show you how to use that you have your putty knife a nice wide putty knife which I like and this is for large hole repair this is fiber reinforced spackling oh it comes with that and it comes with a sanding sponge it's kind of nice that it's not just a piece of paper and of course it comes with instructions you should keep these ones because these are kind of specific but I'm going to follow them exactly so maybe yeah you don't need them my first step was actually to make this hole just a little bit bigger and I know that seems a little counterproductive but you actually have to take this and fold it and put it in the hole to get it to the back side and when I peel that off I don't want it to stick to itself so that's something to keep in mind you might have to make the hole a little bigger if you're using this so now what I want to do is I have to get all this drywall off try and peel it off of the back side remember you can't go behind your wall like you can with this one so I'm going to do this all from this side these double-sided tape pads have to actually stick to that they need something good to stick to now I'm going to take a knife and clean up this Edge now I'm going to take the Sandpaper and just sand down these edges and make it as smooth as possible now I can take this has a strap right here I'm going to use that to pull this against the back first you want to take these off try not to get any dust on here and then fold this up sneak it in here try and open it up make sure it's going to cover the hole and then kind of like that I'm just going to pull it I'm going to put pressure on this for about 30 seconds you can also grab this with the hole that's right here and put a little more pressure on the sides and it does say that the paper on the back of the drywall needs to be intact for this to adhere and I know because I can see it that that is not the case for me but you might not be able to tell because you can't see inside your wall so that might be a downfall hopefully it will stick even though the paper was kind of torn on the back there once that's done you can take this strap and push it through now this hole you want to make sure it's covered that's what this mesh tape is for cut it right here this is self-adhesive just cover that hole like so now I'm going to take my putty knife and my high strength large hole repair compound that is fiber reinforced open that up and now I'm just going to grab this stuff and fill this hole in oh it is much more fluffy than I thought it would be okay this is really easy to spread hmm so I'm going to make sure that it kind of pushes through that mesh back there now I'm going to wipe this putty knife clean and what it says in the instructions is to Wet This putty knife down in between each stroke and try and smooth this out it doesn't say to let it dry first so I guess I'm just going to be careful and see if I can make this a little smoother it says to use a very low angle which I'm guessing is this and not this all right so I'm making a mess here I can't seem to get that smooth by using the water on the putty knife technique so here's what I'm gonna do I'm gonna clean this off and pretty much just leave it where it covers the hole like that I'm just going to wipe off any of the water and the excess compound here and I'm going to let that dry overnight like it says in the instructions and probably I'm going to do a second coat over it and then I'll let it dry and sand it out I let this dry overnight and it is nice and solid now I'm just gonna do another coat over it try and over fill it just a little bit I just want to be able to smooth it out and fill in the edges there I'm not going to taper it like the other stuff I'm just going to fill it in flat and see if I can sand it out oh after a little experimentation with this the water trick that they suggest I'm not really great at it either I just don't know what I'm doing or it doesn't work that well the best thing I can find is to hold this really close like this at an angle like this and really tight and it makes it pretty smooth okay that's sanded out nice and smooth and flat and it looks pretty good there's just a couple imperfections I don't know if it's the fibers or maybe there were a couple chunks in the compound but really it came out pretty good and it's a much smaller patch than the rest of them which is nice so moving on I can't believe I'm actually doing this okay next I'm gonna use something that I've seen and it involves a product that I despise what is it you ask spray foam if you follow my channel you probably know I really don't like spray foam but I saw this technique and it's I guess it's kind of cool but I will say that another one that I saw with spray foam that's absolutely useless and I don't recommend and I'm not going to show you is to do a patch like this second one where you cut out a square and you cut it cut the patch a little smaller and you do your blocking and then you fill the crack or the seam with spray foam and then you wait until the spray foam hardens you cut it off and then you mud over it just like a normal patch my opinion absolutely useless because you gotta wait for the spray foam paper tape is cheap I don't understand the appeal to that one or the benefit of that one so I'm not going to show you that one but what I will show you is one that involves spray foam packing tape a paper clip all kinds of MacGyver type stuff so let's get into it step one try and get all the loose drywall just like with the other patches so the next step would be to tuck some maybe fiberglass insulation in here or some newspaper basically you want to have something that will stop the spray foam from just going into this cavity this is not a normal wall obviously there's nothing back there to hold anything in there so I'm going to put some packing tape on the back side here and that will represent whatever you decide to tuck in your wall now I'm going to put packing tape on this side make sure it's going to stick okay just two pieces should do it make sure they're stuck together and stuck to the wall so now I'm going to take a pick tool you can also use a paper clip is what I saw a lot of people doing and I'm going to heat it up and then I'm going to put a little hole in here about the size of the spout of the spray foam just a little hole like that let's shake up our spray foam really good that'll make a difference I'm just going to fill this up [Applause] okay that should be all I need maybe I put too much in but that'll fill all of this and it'll attach itself to the drywall we'll see how it comes up on the can the spray foam says eight hours to dry I actually let this go overnight and seems pretty solid so I'm gonna clean this up this mess that spray foam makes one of the reasons I don't like it we don't have to keep talking about it and I'm going to very carefully peel this packing tape and try not to peel the paper off of the drywall now if I had one of those Breakaway knives that are really long the utility knife I would be able to cut this that might be the best way to do this I think a flush cut saw like this is probably going to tear the drywall up so what I'm going to try and use is just a coping saw blade and then I'll just try and cut this as flush as possible I don't want any of this spray foam sticking out this way I'm trying to bend this a little bit so that I can take off a little more spray foam so it's so the mud will be set back a little further and you sand spray foam I don't know see if I can get this off oh yeah wow that worked good so let me sand this a little bit make sure there's no pieces sticking out the idea with this is a spray foam is going to stick to the drywall and now my mud will actually go over this and hopefully it will stick to the spray foam which is stuck to this which will make this a decent repair I don't know we're gonna try it all right that's all I'm going to do for a first coat you can see some spray foam sticking out here but I wonder if I could sand that off afterwards probably do a second coat over this so the first coat is pretty much dry the only thing that I could see that might have a problem here is that some of this foam seems to be sticking out a little bit so I'm going to try and sand this patch down more flat and then I can do a second coat okay that came out really good let's move on next this one is super quick and easy will it hold up I don't know all it is is basically a sticker a thin sheet of plastic that has an adhesive back and first you clean up the hole which I've already done just like any of the other ones make sure there's no roughness around it and then we'll open this right up it is literally just a sticker they have four inch and six inch I want to make sure it's going to cover just barely and then you want to peel this off like this exposing all of the adhesive back and then just stick it over the hole press it into place only where it touches the drywall so they tell you to paint this immediately and do a nice thick coat of paint I think what the attempt is is this right around here this Edge you want to fill in basically this drywall so that it's at this height and then you peel this off you don't do it yet but you paint right over this and then you peel this off and then you do two more coats of paint on top of this so I think that is the attempt to kind of blend this in try and do a thick coat here okay I'll let that dry now is actually a good time to talk about painting these patches in and my suggestion is to even if it's a small patch to Prime and paint the entire wall again and the reason for that is because the patch will probably show through if you just paint it if you Prime and paint just the patch what can happen is something called flashing where this might look like a different Sheen than the rest of the wall at certain angles there's techniques like dry brushing where you try and taper it out and you can try that but it might just be easier to repaint the entire wall and if not that's up to you and actually before we move on to the last patch as per directions of this patch I'm going to let this dry completely and then pull this tab and peel off that protective layer and then I'm going to Prime and paint this entire wall grab this tab and carefully you know off this layer all the way around that should look something like that and then you want to at least do two coats over this but I'm going to do primer and paint so I'm using kills PVA primer this is water-based and you can paint it in two hours I like this stuff now that your primer is dry it's a good idea to just lightly sand your entire wall before you paint that way if you have any dust or debris that was in the roller that got stuck to the wall it won't show through the paint primer also tends to highlight any imperfections in your patch so you might have to touch some stuff up and if you look over here you can see that it almost re-wetted the Spackle here and it's bubbling out and some of the patch just kind of came out right here and this doesn't look great I don't think that's going to be a very good finish but I'll try and sand that along with the rest of the wall and see how it comes out the wall is primed and painted and now we're going to talk about our last patch our 10th patch this one is dealer's Choice it's whatever you want to do if you don't like any of these ones I showed you and you don't care if it looks perfect you can tuck some insulation in it I've seen people put steel wool in there fill it up with caulking there's an endless amount of ways you could patch this up and it's all up to you because after all it's your house and when all else fails you can always just hang a picture over it now let's go over each patch and I'll let you know my thoughts number one finding studs very common in the industry and I've done it a lot and I'll continue to do it it worked out very well it does require a little bit of skill and it could get expensive depending on how many tools you actually have same thing with the second one whether you're using blocks or Clips those clips were kind of cool never used those before those are an easy thing to throw in your toolbox if you're doing a job somewhere or throw them in the drawer if you're doing stuff at your house there is actually a product on Amazon it's an entire kit that you can use to do this at a relatively low price I'll leave a link in the description where you can get it number three tapeless or winged this was probably my new favorite I like that the drywall paper is really really thin so I could get it close to the wall and it actually came out really great number four just tape I have never really been a fan of this because of the bubbling of the tape but it is a pretty easy patch to do and it ended up coming out okay number five store-bought patch super quick super easy besides the coats of mud and I guess it depends on how good you are at mudding but it came out great I was able to do it in two coats number six the all-in-one dap repair patch kit I love that it's all in one but I don't love the type of spackle the Finish does not look great you're able to see this entire patch and I think the primer and the paint actually re-wetted the Spackle and brought pieces of it up and into the primer and the paint it just does not look that great it's a little more inexpensive but for my money I would spend it somewhere else number seven the other all-in-one repair patch kit from 3M this one is another one that I was surprised by it's pretty cool because you put that plastic mesh on the back side of the drywall that way you don't have to make a huge patch because you don't have to taper it out far because there's nothing on top of that hole to make it stick out that one I'm impressed by and it's pretty inexpensive and DIY friendly number eight spray foam it came out really good and I hate that it came out really good I don't like spray foam but the idea is simple same kind of idea as number seven nothing was put on top of the patch so it was even with the drywall and once I put that mud on there and sanded it it just it came out really good I'll give it to you spray foam number nine the DAP Eclipse sticker patch this one I'm torn because though it is the cheapest and it is the easiest one of all these patches it probably isn't going to come out that great I think it's great if maybe you were going to hang a mirror or you were gonna tile a backsplash or there's just a quick patch that you needed to do because you got a party coming up or something but it's definitely not a high level beautiful patch for a wall to make it look perfect but if it's going to work for you then I'm happy I showed it to you one more thing I want to do there is no way that I am going to know how this does five years 10 years 20 years from now but I want to do some kind of test so what I'm going to do is I'm going to do the bump test I'm going to use a rubber Hammer to just give it a little bump this will maybe simulate a piece of furniture or a hip bump it into the patch I want to just smash something anyways so let's see how they do this patch center is right here before we give it a little bump I'm just going to push on each of these patches this one is solid as expected let's give it one little bump nice no cracking looking good [Music] the center of this one is right here for I give it a bump let's give it a push cool solid let's see no cracking number three [Music] my new favorite let's see how it holds up push test I see a little wiggling little bump no cracking number four right here a little push this is just the tape solid little bump [Music] looking good number five push ah this one's moving let's see how it does with a bump ah it dented dented Center of this one it's right here let's see if it moves now yep still moving a little bump yeah nice big dent on this one I am not impressed one of my other new favorites right here little push looking good bump oh no that's so sad I guess it's not that strong after all [Music] spray foam a little push [Music] see little bump I mean come on guys I think that's gonna work it looked great but now it doesn't next one I don't even have to mark because I can see the patch very clearly if I give it a little push yep that's what it's going to look like and of course a little bump the bump actually wasn't bad but that's not great there you go after the push and the bump test I'm not surprised by any of the results really except for this one one of my new favorites unfortunately it's not that strong I knew this one wouldn't do too well I knew these ones would do really well foreign I hope you enjoyed this video and I hope there was a ton of information that you learned I know it was a long one but I wanted to jam pack it with as much as I knew about this stuff and if you're interested in supporting my channel you can do so by joining my patreon page or you can click the join button below to join YouTube memberships I would really appreciate it and as a bonus I have a ton of behind the scenes footage up there and I keep uploading it and it's all really fun stuff so if you're interested thanks for watching and we'll see on the next one so you're in high school you just threw a party somebody busted a hole in your wall and you're trying to fix it but the mud isn't drying quick enough well I got the solution for you let's run this bad Larry for a while a little paint hang a picture parents will never know you could use a trash bag a rag Flex tape dirty diaper boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom yeah a little later in the video I'm rambling just a deck of playing cards a piece of bread nobody likes the end slices anyways it's 92 degrees outside why is the heat coming on does all that make sense I want to talk about bro Wanna Talk About bro number one oh real bro let's retake that oh my God come on Matt good I think that it's not close enough [Music] hey a he-man figure an old cell phone Dr Mario on the Game Boy I'm just trying to show you all the different ways that you can do this the first coat is pretty much dry the only thing I can see here that might the only thing that I could see the only thing that I could see that might have a problem here is that some of this foam seems to be sticking out a little bit so I'm going to try and sand this patch down more flat and then I can do a second coat Top Guns Top Gun soundtrack on cassette chattering teeth [Applause] if you want to see another video like this click here or hereish and check it out and as always thank you for watching that's not going to be in there because I have like 20 minutes of outtakes maybe you learned something maybe you didn't maybe you might maybe shut up start it over

Channel: The Fixer

Views: 14,407

Keywords: the fixer, home repair, 10 ways to fix a hole in drywall, drywall repair, drywall, diy, drywall patch, how to repair drywall, how to fix drywall, repair drywall, repairing drywall, repair drywall hole, repair, how to patch drywall, patching drywall, how to repair drywall holes, drywall diy, hole in wall, patch, do it yourself, how to fix drywall hole, how to patch a hole in drywall, hole in drywall, sheetrock, diy drywall repairs, drywall repair large hole, drywall finishing

Id: ekU97raCKqM

Length: 77min 44sec (4664 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 20 2023