How to Repair Drywall -- Buildipedia DIY

from tiny divots to serious damage we'll show you how to repair drywall coming up next on the at home channel at build a PD accom finding a big hole in your drywall isn't much fun but fixing it isn't a big problem i'm jeff wilson and whether you've got a big hole to fix or you're just prepping to paint you can fix most holes with just a few supplies and tools probably the most important thing would be to have a drywall knife or two or a putty knife here's a 4 inch 6 inch and we've got a 10 inch - for larger repairs if you are doing a large repair and you want to have a place to put your joint compound this is a mud pan that's helpful various kinds of sandpaper here's a sanding sponge sort of a fine grit for bigger repairs you might need some sanding screen and a holder for that as well now if you are working on a bigger repair and you need to cut drywall this is a drywall or keyhole saw and that's helpful to have as well all right our first fix is really simple it's just a divot and we're just going to use a small drywall knife like this one and a little bit of spackle the first thing we want to do is just to make sure that our divots are cleaned out a little bit any loose material in there will get stuck in the spackle it'll be difficult to get a nice smooth finish so we're going to take our knife get rid of some of that paper anything loose in there and if you've got a crack you may actually want to enlarge the crack just slightly so it will accept enough of the spackle to make a nice bridge that way you'll make sure that the crack doesn't reappear once the spackle dries now the type of spackle we'll use here is this pink stuff comes in a small canister like this it's pink now while it's wet it'll turn white when it dries so you'll know when it's dry and the process is pretty simple take a little bit of spackle on your knife smear it into the hole and then you want to make it as smooth as you can but it's not critical to make it perfectly smooth you can come back later do just a little bit of sanding that'll smooth it right out now with really small paint chips like this one I'll usually just take a little bit of spackle on my finger rub it on and come back with a damp sponge and wipe it off when that dries it'll be ready to paint with no sanding at all so on a bigger hole like this outlet that we've removed you go about in a similar way first you want to make sure that it's cleaned up and maybe sand the edges just a little bit and then we're going to use a commercially available drywall patch this is a self adhering it's got a little bit of a metal screen that'll act as a reinforcement and hold the joint compound this just peels right off of here and sticks in place then we're going to get some joint compound and put it into our hand now because I've got a big enough hole here I'm going to use my 10 inch knife to actually apply the joint compound the bigger knife help you get a nice thin wide coat and help you do what's called feathering out its bud here a nice coat on there now as you apply this it's going to be pressing into that patch it's going to give a little bit start with a kind of thick use your panda clean off the knife and go back and work on your patch all right well we'll come back and sand down the high spots a little later when it's dry for a larger repair like this one a patch won't do we actually have to put in a new piece of drywall and to do that I've marked a nine by four and a half inch rectangle here are our hole is sort of oddly shaped and be difficult to cut a piece that would fit that but if I cut it into a rectangle than the piece that I cut can just be a simple rectangle to fit right in there so I'm going to make this make this a nice even hole all right we've got our hole enlarged and to a nice even size now on one side of our home we've got a stud so we can screw our patch piece right to the stud on the other side though there's no stud so we're going to use this piece of blocking basically to install the blocking you put it inside the hole hold it up against the back face of the old drywall and run a couple screws into it that will give us something to screw our patch to all right so our patch is in and you'll notice that it's inset just a little bit from the surface of the wall and that's okay what you don't want is a patch that sticks out from the wall it's much easier to fill in with the mud than to try and level out something that's too hot okay we're going to use some of this dry joint compound this time this is actually a type of joint compound that we'll set up in about 90 minutes so we can get this patch on you can get it to set up we can sand it a little bit and since we'll probably need a second coat we'll go ahead and put a second coat on all right one more step before we start mudding here we're going to use some of this fiber reinforcing tape right around the edges of the patch this will help keep cracks from developing later it's self adhesive so it goes right on I'm just going to get a rough first coat on we'll come back and finish coat on in a couple of hours all right our quick drying joint compound feels pretty dry and it's time to do a little sanding but I'm pretty sure based on some of these little divots and things that we'll need to put another coat on here and that's fairly common with the smaller fixes usually one coat maybe two coats with a larger pack like this though you can go to two or three coats before you get it just right and that's alright you can expect that I'm just going to do a little sanding to smooth this out okay well we'll let this dry hit it with a little sandpaper again then it's time for paint with a small fix you can usually use a brush the larger fix you want to break out the roller you may even find the you need to paint a whole wall to make everything blend in and to make the smoother finish of the new joint compound blend in with the bumpier finish of the old paint use a heavy nap roller and that we usually take care of the problem okay our pink spackle is dried and turned white now we just need to sand it a bit to take down the high spots and I've got this fine grit sanding block that'll do that for us there you go nice and smooth a little bit of paint and that'll be fixed right up well as you can see fixing holes in drywall is something anybody can do no matter how bad the damage I'm Jeff Wilson thanks for joining us and come back often for more tips on the at home Channel go BPD accom good work

Channel: Buildipedia

Views: 667,822

Rating: 4.8843932 out of 5

Keywords: how to patch drywall, drywall repair, diy drywall repair, repairing drywall, patching drywall, drywall patch, drywall tools, fixing drywall, drywall repair tips, drywall knife, joint compound, spackling, gypsum board, wallboard repair, gypsum wall repair, hole in wall, hole in drywall, fix a hole, Drywall, Home Repair (Interest), Jeff Wilson, Buildipedia, Kinopicz, Everyday DIY with Jeff Wilson, Kinopicz American

Id: YExsclX294U

Length: 7min 41sec (461 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 27 2011