Comparing Three Drywall Patch Methods

hi I'm Kurt and today I'm groundworks I'm an explorer the pros and cons of three different styles of patching drywall stay tuned [Music] okay up first is using a patch kit to fix the smallest hole in the wall which was caused by too much weight on a coat hook this method starts out with some fast drying dry Dex spackling this really tiny container goes for about six bucks locally and won't cover very much hence its use on this small hole I slather it on using a small putty knife making sure to fill in the hole and also get some underneath the drywall flat this is mostly just to get a base coat though next up is the meat of this particular method which is a self-adhesive aluminum mesh repair patch these go for four or five dollars locally I pick the size such that the metal portion completely covers the hole with maybe an inch or more all the way around I press it into the wall surface making sure that the hole is centered that adhesive on a sticks really well the patch is a mesh mostly to give some truth to give the spackling something to hold on to therefore I just use my putty knife to completely cover the patch ensuring that is pressed into the mesh after the patch is entirely covered I go over it with a six inch drywall knife to smooth it out the goal is to create uneven pressure on the blade as it goes over the patch that is I put more pressure on the outside edge to the inside edge this results in less material being on the outside and more on the inside and contributes to the feathering effect that I'm going for I don't go crazy on his first coat though it's very much a rough coat the beauty of dry decks is that it can be dry in as little as an hour and really at worse will be dry within four or five hours that allows for multiple coats to be applied in a single day make sure to sand in between coats to make sure I have a smooth surface before the next one in this case I'm using a normal sanding block with some high grit sandpaper and trying to capture all the dust using my shop back one advantage of this method is it works pretty quickly but it does generate a fairly huge amount of dust without the vacuum and even with the vacuum you have to expect some dust to escape and cover pretty much everything nearby the next coat was gonna be my finish coat since it'll be textured later I use my six inch drywall knife and I'm concentrating more on a smooth finish with gently feathered edges than anything related to coverage the concept is the same as earlier though as I'm putting more pressure on the outside edge than the inside edge when this dries I do a final smoothing using a wet sponge this is an alternative to sanding at any stage actually the sponge leaves a super smooth surface and leaves no dust whatsoever which is a pretty sweet it's not quite as aggressive as sandpaper though so I typically only use this as a finish step and even then if it's a much bigger job in this then I will probably still use sandpaper since this method is notably slower and that's it for the patch the final steps in the repair are the texture the surface the match was already there and then Prime and paint done ok the pros of this method are 1 the super quick dry time means that I can go from hole to finish wall in a single day to substantially faster than the other methods and two if you get this as a kit it actually makes it a very easy and very convenient method for small holes on a negative side though one this is the most expensive method I mean this cost about 10 bucks 11 bucks for even a single little hole and each hole you fix will cost at least that much I can start adding up pretty fast and - this really is only suitable for small holes as the patches won't even go above a certain size and then they started getting prohibitively expensive alright the next method I'll try out is the California patch or butterfly patch it might technically be called the butterfly patch but I've almost exclusively heard it referred to as the California patch so I guess that's what I'm gonna refer to it going on it starts out with a piece of scrap drywall that is roughly three inch to four inch wider and taller than the whole in my case I have two holes that will eventually combine into one but not yet I will create that combined hole later so I mark off some lines one and a half inch to two inches from the edge on all four sides the inner part dictates the final hole size so it needs to be at least as big as the existing hole or holes in this case now in my case the existing holes are covered by a roughly 4 inch by 8 inch patch so that becomes my inner size note that my lines aren't even remotely perpendicular to each other the scrap piece I was using wasn't at all square and I essentially just made my lines parallel to the existing ones but see it doesn't matter at all in the end the very next step looks like you're gonna snap the drywall to some size I start by scoring along the back a couple times on each side then I apply a sharp blow to the edge to snap off the gypsum and leave it hanging by the outer finish paper again this is just like how you would normally snap drywall to size with a typical next step being to use your utility knife to slice the remaining paper but don't this is where the California patch becomes its own unique thing that is instead of cutting off those edges I'm going to peel off the gypsum from the glue holding it to the paper on the finish side the end result is a wing of sorts made up of the continuous piece of paper from the finish side I then repeat this for all four sides now this was the first time I've ever tried a California patch and it definitely didn't go as well as I would have liked one big lesson I learned is that 5/8 inch thick type hex drywall is a poor choice for the patch since the embedded fibers in the gypsum prevented from crumbling a way to roll off the paper it also has a stronger glue than typical drywall does so after I went finish this patch I did experiment with different types and sizes of drywall and fun with it the easiest to work with turned out to be just a bog-standard 1/2 inch drywall so if you were to just try this method and didn't have any strap drywall laying around you can actually buy project panels at most hardware stores but that's one of the benefits of this patch approach it doesn't matter at all what the thickness of your patch is compared to the thickness of the original drywall since your patch will essentially be floating in the hole but yeah the wings of my patch ended up being thinner and with more ragged edges than I'd prefer now whatever it worked next up is using my patch to mark up the precise size of the hole this is why it doesn't matter what precise shape or size the patch is since whatever it is will become the precise shape and size of the hole I use my oscillating tool to cuddle with this hole it's quick doesn't generate an excessive amount of dust and creates a very clean hole it also doesn't cut very deep so if there are any where is behind it reasonably safe I didn't need to fine-tune the whole side of my utility knife to give the patch room to breathe a better way would have been to just cut out my hole just to the outside of my lines rather than to the inside I took the time to sand on the peaks on the texturing just draw outside the hole but that step isn't strictly required and I'm not really sure it made any difference at the end to install the patch I first apply a liberal amount of joint compound to the edges of the patch not to the wings but rather all four of the chips and sides the patch is then pressed into the hole since the joint compound is on the edge a little bit will be squeezed into any voids between the patch and the wall but most of it will coat the back of the wings and then be squeezed out this simultaneously fills in any little holes and saturates the paper for this first coat I just concentrate on spreading it out and then ensuring that the patch is level at the wall it'll have a tendency to want to float out at first so I didn't need to push it in and squeegee off to joint compound a few times I let this dry overnight and then sanded it before adding the second coat this is a more traditional second coat a compound like you'd apply on the joint of two joined drywall sheets for instance I apply it with my 6-inch drywall knife but after it's there I almost immediately switch to my wide knife this does a much better job of feathering out the compound using the same technique of more pressure on the outside in the inside that's because there's a lot more pressure variance over the much wider edge for sanding I use my normal travel sander which uses mesh sandpaper and is hooked directly up to a shop after the mesh sandpaper is relatively aggressive and allows the dust to be sucked up very efficiently the suction also keeps the sander stuck to the wall which makes it mildly easier and mildly harder to use simultaneously one big benefit of this is that there is essentially no dust that escapes while still having the typical benefits of sandpaper after this dries it's the standard text reader and Prime and paint just like before all right the pros of this method first of all this is the cheapest method of three since it just requires a scrap piece of drywall and some joint compound the joint compound mind you is about maybe five bucks for a huge pocket of it compared to like five dollars for a tiny container of dry decks then the wings become their own joint tape and create a smooth transition from patch to the wall that is you do not need any tape in this particular case and don't have to worry about any cracking then the thickness of the drywall patch doesn't matter at all since it's as floating in the hole you created any type of drywall work although again like I found you probably want to use the half inch standard drywall another benefit is this can actually handle non rectangular holes pretty easily and finally well this is arguably little slick method for fixing medium to large holes the cons though well creating the wings on the patch definitely takes some practice when I try this my first time here as you saw it wasn't very nice and honestly this might be the hardest method to learn to do well maybe after you do learn how to do it it'll actually be pretty easy but well I haven't seen that yet alright the third method is arguably the most traditional and it's suitable for any size hole but really shines for larger holes that might require extra support the start of this method is very similar to the California patch style and that I cut out a piece of scrap drywall that's just slightly bigger than my original hole the big difference is that instead of peeling off the gypsum and creating wings I follow through on the snap procedure by cutting through the paper thus my patch has no wings on it at all like before I use my patch to draw with exact size of the hole it's far easier to just make the hole the size of the patch then to somehow make a patch that's exactly the size of an existing hole I use a jab saw to cut it out this time jab saws are obviously much cheaper than either oscillating tools or something like a zipper or anything like that they also aren't notably slower to use that said though they don't require a lot more room in the wall cavity are quite a bit Messier create a less precise hole and might actually be a little bit more tiring to use I guess in general more fine-tuning is needed for this style patch than for the California style since it's not going to be floating and you do want it to be a little more precise oh and since it won't be floating it also means that your patch needs to be the exact same thickness as the druk existing drywall in this particular case it needs to be 1/2 inch thick any thinner or thicker and it just wouldn't work now is the time for the step that makes this a unique method I take a scrap piece of wood and insert it into the walls that it straddles a hole this is a couple inches wide and maybe six or seven inches long the key being though that it actually straddles a hole by a couple inches in this particular case I put the piece of wood at an angle to maximize the surface area inside of the hole I then drill some pilot holes through the drywall and into the wood then normal horse drywall screws are used to scare it into place I'm using one of those bits specifically made for driving in drywall screws they dimple the paper just enough to seat the drywall screw head just under the finish level cheap but effective this method uses joint compound as well compared to spackling it's much much cheaper and so can be used for much larger patches but on the other hand while this faculty drives it one to five hours the joint compound takes a full 24 hours to do the same that means that neither the California method nor this method can be completed in a day the fact that a minimum you're looking at three days for each of these styles I apply some compound directly to the support board and the edges of the hole and then press the patch into place the compound works essentially as a glue to hold a patch fairly securely but no I don't leave it at that and I also pre-drill and drive in a couple of drywall screws now a hole this size may or may not require joint tape along the seams probably does I likely would have used it here if I had more space but well I'm constrained by the outlets on both side of this hole and so then I just kind of didn't bother taping it that does leave a higher likelihood of eventually cracking so I'm Haiti I regret it literally everything that follows is exactly like the California patch so I'm not gonna show it yet all right clothes for this method is that first of all it has the strongest support for larger holes then it also doesn't require any special skills or practice like the California patch method does but like the California patch one uses inexpensive joint compound and tape the cons are well it does require having a piece of scrap wood that fits behind the hole maybe you don't have that ready the wall also needs to be open enough to fit the wood support and you really should use tape which is another step the tape requirement also makes it difficult to patch non rectangular holes and finally the thickness of the patch must exactly match the thickness of the existing drywall or it simply won't work well as you can see there really wasn't one obvious winner of them all although I guess two of them kind of stood out to me the first being the kind of kit style at the dry decks and mesh that one is probably the way to go if you're just gonna do a small hole it was way easier than the other two and honestly the fact that you could do it all in one day it's kind of a killer feature of that that said the California patch the fact that you can actually do it with any thickness of drywall and you can also do it with without using any tape is a huge benefit as far as I'm concerned I probably would do it that way versus the kind of traditional method for most of the cases where it's not just a small old I guess it's also possible to use the dry decks with the California patch and in that case you might get really the best of all worlds and maybe it would even be worth using for small holes in that case I will say though the California patch definitely took a lot more skill than I thought it would my first version right there yeah that was pretty terrible but yeah it does seem with a little practice it wouldn't be so bad if you liked this video consider subscribing and either way thanks for watching

Channel: Granworks Workshop

Views: 341,042

Keywords: granworks, DIY, drywall, patch, drydex, california, butterfly, methods, test, comparison, how to, drywall patch, drywall repair, how to patch a hole in drywall, do it yourself, california patch drywall, how to patch drywall, patching a hole in drywall

Id: xzdQL7J6RZA

Length: 17min 19sec (1039 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 23 2017