How to Repair a Cracked Drywall Ceiling | This Old House

[Music] so you blaming your kids for this first I thought I might be able to tape it up and just replaster it and be done deal but then I thought maybe I had a kind of rectangle around put some more drywall up at that point I just figured I was over my head well you're right about one thing it's a ceiling so it is over your head let's take a look up in the attic and here's what happened I climbed up the attic stairs trying to go get the toy and what I usually try to do is put my feet on the plywood and when the plywood runs out I'll put my hands on these collar ties here and put my feet on the joist yeah so I walked back and got the toy and I heard my kids scream and I said I better hurry so I started going back a little too fast and I noticed right here when I put my foot down I didn't hit the joist I miss I missed all right so let's see take up this insulation oh yeah that's the damaged wall board right there this one yeah you can really see the damage well what you have here first of all this is a 2x8 ceiling joist and there's 16 inches on center and they run from the front of the house to the back of the house a rafter two rafter underneath that is this one by three furring strip or strapping what's this used for well it's a couple of things the electrician can use it to run their wires under the joist so they don't have to drill them and the wall board is fastened their wall boy to it country so we're gonna have to cut out the damaged wall board and replace it no we're gonna re secure the damaged wall board all right what I want to do is I want to locate the strapping from down below to do that I'm simply gonna drill a hole in the middle of the strapping right through the ceiling now we can see that hole from down below all right let's see if we can see that hole there it is now that hole is a first piece of strategy and we know that it runs across the room this way every 16 inches across the ceiling is another piece of strata now what I've done is I've taken two pieces of plywood and I screwed it together because I wanted to be really rigid what's with the holes it almost looks like a piece of Swiss cheese well this row of holes right here represents the strapping above this row holds a 60 inches apart from this Rojo represents the second piece of strappin now what I want you to do is hold this up under the ceiling but line up one of the holes with the ad hole let me see it alright now what I did is I actually cut a piece of 2x4 to fit between the ceiling and the floor and I'm gonna use this to jack up that piece of plywood pushing the wall board up against the strap I've installed a drywall tip in my screw gun which will allow the drywall screw to countersink just at the right depth I'm gonna screw it right through one of the holes alright now we've screwed the wall board to the strapping now we have to introduce some structure between the strapping so we can screw the wall board to it and I'm simply gonna use a piece of 5/8 plywood before I put the plywood in I'm gonna run some construction adhesive on the top of the wall boy leave the truck leave the plywood in push it around a little bit now the plywood fits under the joists loosely because it's a little bit thinner than the strapping one neck okay you know a little over here a couple of shims under the joist I'm gonna sandwich it between the plywood joists pushing the plywood down tight to the wall wood now that's it just screw off the middle okay you got them off yep all right let's put a couple of screws on here on each side of this crack of that crack okay all right you want to hold that plywood I'm gonna bang the jack out see how it looks good we got some touch-up to do now using my hammer I'm gonna knock off any loose pieces using this painters tape will protect the wall a little bit now I want to use this fiberglass mesh tape to tape over the crack all right now we're ready to cover over our patch with some joint compound if we look at the pattern that's on the ceiling it's actually called a skip trial pattern so the first thing I want to do is I want to take my compound and I want to skim over the tape and the cracks lightly nice lay right over it with the cracks and the screw heads covered we're ready to apply the texture to do that I'm simply gonna lay a little compound on my trowel and I'm gonna skip the reason we call it skipped wrong is because I'm not applying a lot of pressure the trowel is actually skipping over well what do you think Kevin this is great I can't even see the patch well that's the idea of it now in a couple of days when it's dry put a coat of paint on it and it should disappear do you think you can handle that definitely you

Channel: This Old House

Views: 5,315,078

Rating: 4.6449857 out of 5

Keywords: This Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, Drywall, Ceiling, Home Repair, Construction, crack, repair Do It Yourself, Tom Silva, patch, caulk, Trowel, joint compound, tom silva this old house, tom silva house, tom silva construction, tom silva tools, tommy silva, home construction ideas, construction project, home construction project

Id: Btkt0F7O-O8

Length: 6min 49sec (409 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 18 2014