Hi, there I'm Nils with LRN2DIY and sometimes
bad stuff happens to your drywall. Today we're going to cover
all of these types of damage, and we're going to show you
how to fix each one of them. Now just about every hole that you'll
find in drywall falls into one of four types. Basically you've got something
that's really small, like an inch, inch and a half or a smaller, maybe
that's two and a half, three centimeters. And that's something that we can
patch a certain way up from there. You got anything between that size and
maybe fist size four or five inches or so. And then from there, you've got something that's big enough
that it's in between your studs, or maybe it's even over a stud,
but it needs some support. So we're talking stuff that's about
this big or smaller, maybe a seven, eight inches, nine inches in
that range. And then lastly, we've got some major damage,
like what we showed over here, and this is just going to need
to have a whole section replaced. So those are the four types we're going
to cover. And with those four types, we're going to show you the best and
quickest way to handle each of those. And then I've put chapters below. So you can actually skip ahead to the
section that matches your situation best. And then with that, we'll show you
how to do the patches for each one. And then at the end of the video, I'll show you how to match that
texture and make it look smooth. And just like the wall was before, whether you've got orange peel or a
Santa Fe or knocked down or completely smooth wall. Now to start off with, we have this really small hole right
over here, that was about an inch. And then we had another one
in this lower left corner. And with something like that, anything that is about an inch or so
maybe two and a half centimeters or so and smaller, you can actually
just patch that just with mud. You don't really need tape. You
don't need a patch kit necessarily, and you can use those things, but they're not going to help a whole
lot because it's such a small hole it should be easy enough to work with. With that what you're going to do is take
some mud that you get at the store and you can buy this in this larger
bucket like this for about $6. They're actually really inexpensive. You can also buy powder
that you mix up yourself, or you can buy a really small container
if you just have a small hole like that. Now with that, you're
going to use a putty knife. I recommend using one that's at
least three or four inches in width. And with the knife like that, a mud
knife, you're just going to take it. And we're going to fill in
that hole as best we can. You want to be pretty generous in pushing
that mud back into that hole to make sure that it's really back-filled and
there's plenty in there so that it's nice and strong when it dries.
Now on the first coat, you're going to have some bubbling.
It's going to bulge out a little bit. It's not going to want to stay in
place really well. And that's okay. We're going to just put that
in there as well as we can, cover it up and then we'll let that sit. Now with this fist size hole
that we've got over here, there's a few ways that
you can tackle this. I'll show you all three and two of them
are very similar. With the first one, you can buy a large patch that's a
mesh adhesive patch like this one here. We can actually just apply this eight
by eight patch over the whole thing. And the goal here is really simple.
We're going to clean up our edges, make sure it looks good. And then we're going to smooth that
patch out as best we can to make sure there's no creases or wrinkles
or any issues with that patch. And it's nice and smooth. And then we're going to take our mud and
we're going to fill that in and push a lot of that mud into the
area that has the hole in it. And you can see from the back here, when
you push mud in through these patches, like this, it's kind of a Play-Doh fun
factory effect. And that's what we want. We want to get a lot of that back there
to rebuild that drywall that's back behind there. And once we've got that field in really
nicely through the area behind the patch, then we're going to cover up the whole
patch itself using that same knife. And our goal here is just
to get it nice and clean. It doesn't have to be perfect. We just want it to look really good
and cover up everything that's there. So that's option number one
for your first coat option. Number two is what's
called the Presto patch. The Presto patch is a really simple idea. Basically it's a four
circle of half inch drywall. And then it's got a larger section of
paper that we'll use to blend that in with the surrounding wall. So the idea with this one is you
take the styrofoam that came with it. It's a template. You trace
out your template with pencil, and then we're going to cut that out
with a knife and get that circle just the right size to match that Presto patch.
Now, once we've got that circle cut out, we're going to liberally apply mud
all around the inside of the circle. As best you can also apply around the
outside of the circle where the paper goes, and then don't forget to
apply it also to the plug itself. So you'll want to apply that mud
liberally to the patch itself, especially on the top
of it, of that circle, where some of the gravity will have
pulled it down from the hole in the wall. And then we're going to push
that in. And from there, we're going to use our
knife to pull across. We're going to pull
from the center outward, and we're going to smooth all of that
mud out from underneath the paper and try to get that nice and smooth and matching
up with the contour of the wall again. Now while you're watching
the work going on down below, I want to tell you about our
sponsor for today's video, PureVPN. PureVPN gives you the ability to basically
be somewhere else on your computer. It adds security, anonymity, and new
features to your browsing experience, and you can get it for dirt cheap by
using the link in the description below. So if you're looking for a VPN service, check out pure VPN and use that
discount below to save some money. Now, just like before we want to
cover it enough that it's
covering everything there. And we're not going to have
anything peeking through, but not so much that it's
going to take two years to dry, where we're going to have
to sand for eternity. Now, the third technique that we can use for
a hole like this is we can use what's called the California patch. Now with that, we're doing the same
thing that we saw with the Presto patch, but this time we're actually cutting
our own essentially out of drywall. The first step in doing something like
this is cutting out a square as big as it needs to be to get good,
strong drywall all around it. So anything that's been roughed up or
broken, especially on that backside. We want to cut that out and make that
square as big as it needs to be to where we've got good, solid drywall there. So
I'm using a square about this big here. I'm going to clean up my
edges and make sure it decent. And then I'm going to
use a piece of drywall. I'm going to cut a piece that's about
an inch and a half bigger on all sides than that square. So let's
say this was a five by five. Then we want to cut a piece of
drywall that's about eight by eight. Then that leaves us with that inch
and a half all the way around. Now, once you've got that piece, you can
hold the piece right up to the wall, use your knife to score a line all the
way down one side and all the way down the inside that's just a little
bit smaller than the hole. Now we're going to flip it to the other
side for the height and do the same thing. We're going to have that square in the
middle that's going to keep there and end up being our plug. From there you're going to snap off and
then you're going to peel everything but that front paper off. So you're going to get all of the gypsum
and that back paper removed on all four sides so that you end up with a plug
like this, just like the Presto patch, but one that we made
ourselves. And then from there, the technique is exactly like what
we showed with the Presto patch. We're going to line the outside of this
and the inside of the hole with mud. We're going to line mud all over
the inside of the patch itself. I'm going to push that in after we've
got the right fit and we've dry fitted it to make sure it works okay. We're going to smooth out all
the mud from all of the paper. And then we're going to cover the
whole thing in its first coat. Now the only difference between the
second type of hole and the third type of hole in your drywall is backing.
If it's a little bit bigger, if it's anything bigger
than about fist size, I would recommend that you
put some backer boards on it. And this technique is really simple. You
just need a couple of scraps of wood, could be anything. Plywood works really well because
it doesn't split very easily, but you can use some
leftover MDF, some trim, um, just some one by pine that
you have lying around. Anything will work pretty well. And what you want to do is cut it so that
it extends out a couple of inches past the width of the hole on both sides or
the height, whichever way you want to go. It doesn't matter if you put these
horizontally or vertically really, but our goal is to provide four
corners for the patch to screw into. And then those four corners are supported
by screws into the drywall around it. So we're going to drive some
screws with these boards here. We're going to drive them right into
the board and have that pucker the board right up tight against the drywall. And
then once I've got those two boards in, I end up with a nice area and
support for my patch to go into. Now, a fix like this, you can
actually go fairly large on this. If you've got a 10 inch hole, for example, then it can cover something
like that pretty easily, as long as you've got that support and
you've cleaned up your square and you've got made sure that you've got
good drywall to work with. What you don't want to do is kind of go
skimpy on the size of the hole that you cut for this, and then have weak
drywall to work with around it. Because this depends on the strength of
the drywall surrounding the hole that you've cut out. Now, our fourth type of hole
is the largest thing. That's where there's a lot of damage. Somebody's body checked the whole
wall or something like that, or got thrown into it. And you've
got a large amount of damage here, and it's pretty beat up. With that, what I would doing every time is just
cutting it out from stud to stud. You're going to need a stud finder that
you can rely on to find exactly where the studs are and then you're
going to mark those on your wall. Once you have those studs marked, you
can use a jab saw or a drywall saw. You can also use a knife for this, like
a box cutter like we've been using, but a jab saw makes quick work of this. And we're going to cut from stud to stud. We're also going to cut right down along
the inside of the two studs where we're working. So now that we know exactly
where the inside of the studs are, we want to come over about three quarters
of an answer about half the thickness of the stud, and we're going to use a knife and
we're going to open that section up. The goal here is to have a lip or a
secure area for the new piece of drywall that we're going to put in, to sit on. We're going to actually have
it span from stud to stud, and it will then be able to use those
studs to fasten in and hold in place really well. Now, just like
with the California patch, we could create a large California
patch here to fit in this area, but I'm going to show you how to
do this with mesh tape instead, which is a very common method
for a larger area like this. So basically we're going to fasten this
new piece in we're going to use our dry wall screws and drive it in. We're going to apply some of
our yellow adhesive mesh tape. We're going to apply
one piece on each side, try not to overlap them because that
just adds to the thickness of the, of the covering that we have to do,
and then use your knife to tear it. It makes a nice straight line
it's really easy to work with. And once we've got all four
sides covered up there, then we're just going to apply mud
just like before into those seems, we're going to push that
in. And from the back, you can see what this looks like. We're really just pushing that mud really
thick into that area to try to cover as much of that half inch section
or 5/8 inch section as we can. So we're going to just cover this all up
so that you can't see the tape anymore. Again, it doesn't have to be perfect on the
first coat and we're going to do our best to get it nice and covered. We'll come back to the next day and
the next day we can go through and sand this, and you can do this with a hand
sanded sponge like this guy here, or you can do this with a
orbital sander, for example, or a palm sander if you have one. But make sure to wear proper respiration, this is going to kick a lot of dust up. So make sure that your
lungs are protected. I would recommend some goggles
or safety glasses as well. So our second coat, we are
going to use a larger knife, and I'm going to try to cover that up and
smooth everything over after it's been sanded. So we'll put that second
coat on. We call it a skim coat. And what I also recommend doing there
is mixing up some water into your pan. So if you have a mud pan, if you don't,
you can use something similar to it, but mud pans are awesome because they
have a blade on either side to scrape that extra mud off of, and it gives you a nice clean blade every
time you use it or a nice clean knife. So we're going to use that and we're
going to skim across here and we're going to get this nice and covered. And hopefully it ends up with
a pretty smooth finish. Now, depending on if you're working with kind
of a knockdown style or Santa Fe style texture on your wall versus an orange
peel, you might end up with some, you know, high spots and low spots
and things like that. But again, the goal is just to get
it as smooth as we can. I'm going to feather on
that outside. Feather on this outside, same with the top and the
bottom creating a nice smooth transition. And then one down the
middle. There we go. Okay. That makes all the difference. Having
a good blade. It really does help. So if you can get one, these
things are pretty cheap too. I think they're usually around 10
bucks for a metal blade like this. I've been using this one for
years and it works well. Now, depending on how that comes
out with that second coat, you might need to come back and
sand it and do a third coat. Or maybe it's looking good at that
second coat and you're ready to place texture. Now, no matter what size the patch was that
we had to take care of on the wall, you want to make sure to use something
that matches the texture afterward. So if you've got an orange peel sort of
texture on your wall and you finish it smooth, it's going to look
like it was patched. Same with, if you do the opposite, now they do sell different
textures that you can purchase. You can buy these online and I'll
put links in the description below. They come in different size cans
and there's different ways to do it, but I'll put some of my favorites and
then you can also stop at the local hardware store and pick up
this wall texture in a can. They've got orange peel like you see here. And then they also have a knockdown
variety. Now, with both of these, you've got different settings. You can move this tab from side to side
to adjust the pressure that it sprays. And then you can twist this knob here
to adjust the coarseness or fineness of the spray. So you might want to experiment on a
piece of cardboard or an unseen area, just to make sure that you're not trying
this out for the first time on your actual wall. And then you can just
spray it in circular motion like this, and this actual spray is in
bad shape, for whatever reason, it's not spraying out very well. Typically it will spray a little bit
better than this, but you get the idea. So we're going to cover that up and then
you'll end up with hopefully a decent matching orange peel texture. Now,
if you don't have orange peel, but you have something more like the
Santa Fe or knockdown down texture, and you can recognize that by how it
has some areas that are raised and some that are lowered, it looks kind of like
this kind of Euro texture going onto it. It's very traditional. It's
been around for a long time. So if you have that texture, you can
also buy some knockdown texture in a can. And the gist here is very similar. You're going to spray it in kind of a
random pattern around the area that needs to be treated. And then you're going to use a 10 or
12 inch knife and pull across it really evenly. And your goal is to
leave this as smooth as possible. You don't want any little streaks or
cuts or scrape marks in there or anything like that, because this is kind of the
final coat that you're going to be doing. Now, if you don't want to use the can, you can also just use this by hand with
some mud and just dab some mud on here in different areas, kind of randomly, you want to make sure to not make it look
like it's in rows or lines or anything like that. So keep that as random as
possible. And then just like before, you're going to take your 10 or
12 inch knife and pull it across, go in various directions if you
need to to try to get that nice, smooth finish to it. And
if you have a good blade, a metal blade makes it so much easier. I've tried this with the plastic ones
and they don't really do very well. But with that metal blade, you can pull that across and
get a really good texture. And your goal is to leave some
of the areas, a little lower, some a little higher. So you have that
knocked down or Santa Fe, look to it. Now, the last thing to do is just paint. So make sure that you get
all of the dust off there. This stuff can be really porous. It
can really soak up a lot of that paint, but you don't want to end up with a
lot of dust on your roller while you're doing this. And as you can see here, this wall that was full of holes just a
couple of days ago is now patched up and looks good. Now, one tool that was
really helpful on these larger patches, especially like this one up here is a
good stud finder knowing exactly where that stud is having an accurate
representation of that. I did a video a little while ago on
several different stud finders compared we did the stud finder showdown. So if you want to check that out and
see which one works best for you, you can click on that link right up
there. Thanks for watching, I'm Nils, and we'll see you on the next one.
