How to fix a crack in a wall or ceiling - DIY

what's going on guys i'm bill and welcome to bills how to today i'm going to show you guys how to repair a crack in the ceiling let's get straight into it guys let's do this all right guys so i'm going to show you how to fix a crack in the ceiling it's very common to find these whether it's a new house or an old house due to settling and also stress points in their house as we've got here in the corner it's very common to find these but luckily for you guys the repair is very simple and straightforward so the first thing we want to do is make sure that our roof is actually secure so quickly push on both sides make sure everything's nice and secure sometimes if a nail has come loose or the adhesive has given way then the ceiling will tend to move in that section and that'll cause a crack so in this particular case our ceiling is nice and strong seems to be running right along here on the edge of um a single piece of roof shading here so what we're going to do first and foremost is we're going to take our little seven in one ten in one whatever you wanna call it um and we're gonna make it basically make this crack a little bit wider it might seem like it's counterproductive you're making more damage but what we need to do is make sure that we're actually able to fill the joint compound into that crack before applying our tape so the easiest way to do this just try and do it with one hand so we're going to take the little corner section here as you can tell there's a little v in there and we're going to just basically put it through the crack and we're going to run it all the way through so as you can tell there i've made that crack nice and wide and now that gives somewhere for my joint compound to go into so i'm going to quickly go around this whole crack opening it all the way up just running along that crack just like that [Music] [Music] so in my case this crack goes all the way around this single piece of shading right here if your one tends to just travel along and then thins out a lot and just disappears what you want to do at that point is go right up to the end of the crack and just put a little intersection going across there so whether you do that with a utility knife a chisel a flathead screwdriver we just want to stop providing an easy path for this crack to travel the crack to travel in so by putting a little intersection here that's going to stop providing a little travel path for our crack to travel in so i always like to do that but in this case here it just runs all the way around so i'm going to quickly go all the way around and then i'll put a little intersection on this side here [Music] so we'll keep coming around this corner and you can see right here it just continues to thin out until it turns into nothing so at this point here right where it just turns into nothing i'm going to put a little slot going all the way across with my utility knife once i finish cutting all this part here out and you can see right there it hasn't actually cracked all the way through take a utility knife make a little intersection going across a little bit hard to do with one hand but i'll manage [Music] open that side there up as well now this is just something that i personally like to do you won't find too many people doing this but in my case i always do this so i find that will prevent it from re-cracking for as long as possible by simply stopping the path where the crack wants to travel in then you can take a scraper and just clean off the surface make sure there's no loose material now that we've got that out of the way we can take our paper tape or a mesh tape in my case whether you use paper or mesh it's completely up to you guys i prefer to use mesh tape for any small repairs and any of the larger work or new installation or use paper tape so what we're going to do now is i'm just going to basically work out my pieces that i need roughly i'll pre-cut them and i place them up on the ceiling now i only do this because a lot of the times i'm working by myself or i'm holding the camera in my hand if you've got somebody else with you you can get them to have this fun job so once again go across this side here and we'll just take this one here up on the ceiling as well so now we can take our joint compound and we're just going to fill in this little crack right here and we're also going to provide a little bit of bedding underneath so that we can put our mesh tape into so we're just basically going to fill that all in you can try and put the tape and then try and push the material in through the tape but i prefer not to go on a bit of an angle across the crack that we've created or the opening that we've created don't worry about your finished product put a little bit more create a bit of a bedding there now we can remove our tape and put that over our crack just tap it in in a couple areas same thing on this side here you don't want to overlap your tape then it becomes a bit too thick and when you try and smooth over the top you end up pulling off the sections of tape so once again go over the top but what i'm going to do at this point is i'll just go across make sure i'm tacking everything in so it doesn't move out of the way embed that tape as much as possible and don't be too concerned about your finish at the moment all we're basically trying to do now is just embed that tape so when it comes to our second and third coat that's when we're gonna perfect everything but we're just gonna basically aim at embedding the tape for now once you've got a decent amount on there then you can go over the top smooth it all off [Music] now don't be too hard on yourself if it's not perfect once again all you want to do is just try and cover that tape as much as possible you will still be able to see the little intersections of the actual tape once you've done that then you can just feather out the edges only slightly don't worry if there's any lines or anything like that that's left in your finish and once the first coat's on this is basically what it looks like so like i said it's not pretty at the moment we've got a couple high areas right here that i'm going to scrape off once this is completely dry but the first coat isn't supposed to look pretty this is what it ends up looking like leave it wait for it to dry then we're going to scrape off any little high areas light little sand if you really need to on the edges if you've built it up a bit too much but then we're just going to go out a lot wider so i'll see you guys once this section here is dried off and once that first coat is dry this is what it ends up looking like so what we're going to do is take a joint knife or a scraper and we're just going to remove any high spots that there may be up here and now we're going to take a bigger joint knife and we're going to apply our second coat so now i've got my larger joint knife and what we're going to do is we're just going to go a little bit wider so we'll just take it out almost double the width out to the side and then we're going to try and smooth it off and feather it out vast majority of times you can get away with two coats however you might need a third coat just to make sure that we've got a perfect transition so larger joint knife will make your life so much easier run over the middle we're going to make sure that we're covering any of those little divots that we've got from the mesh tape once again don't be too concerned about how perfect it is as we put on more and more coats it'll slowly feather out and it'll become perfect so usually on the second coat i can get it to feather out so that we can sand it and it'll be ready but we'll just wait and see how we go just try not to block the view just make sure that you've got enough on the height in the middle and then we're going to work out that side and feather it off so build up your center section until the tape is completely covered like that and now you can choose to either feather it off on the edge on both sides or because this one is crossing over another way that you can do it is just run sideways so so now the second coat's on you can see that it's completely feathered all the way across there are some lines from the edge of the joint knife or if you're using a trail the edge of the trail that's not a large concern that'll be easily knocked off once this is all dry so just leave it on there once it's dry we can knock off those high spots give it a light sand and if you're happy with the finish at that point you can then prime and paint or if you need to just give it a third coat which will be your final coat so at the moment this one is looking pretty good we'll let it dry and come back and see how it ends up so once the second coat's dry this is what it ends up looking like it's almost 100 perfect probably about 90 so i am gonna give it a final skim coat um and if you have a look at these little high spots here this is where the edge of the joint knife has hit and this isn't a big issue at all so we have to do in this case is just scrape it off give it a tiny little sand and you're ready to go so what i'm going to do is i'm going to scrape off all these high spots i'm going to give it one final skim bring it out just a little bit wider once again and that should be perfect ready to go wipe the area down then you can apply your primer and once that's dry we'll give it two coats of ceiling paint and after two coats of ceiling paint this here is the finished product so the crack is completely gone now repaired and repainted hopefully you guys have enjoyed it you've learned something new this is a very common household problem and now you've got a diy video so that you guys can get out there and give it a go yourselves hopefully you've enjoyed the video guys as always like comment and subscribe until next time i'm bill thanks for watching bill's how to

Channel: Billshowto

Views: 5,353,819

Keywords: ceiling, How to fix cracks in ceilings and walls, how to fix a crack, fix a crack, crack in wall, fixing ceiling cracks, how to fix ceiling, drywall ceiling crack, ceiling crack repair, how to fix, repair, diy, fix, drywall repair, how to, drywall, crack in ceiling, drywall patch, ceiling crack, drywall crack repair, ceiling cracks, patching ceiling cracks, how to fix drywall cracks, painting, how to fix wall, mesh tape, patching, gyproc, cracks, crack, walls, cracked, cracked drywall

Id: GrcjDq3PCJ4

Length: 13min 1sec (781 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 29 2021