Another weekend come and gone. They always go too quick! Luckily, we managed to finish one project and make some progress with another. We finally finished our cabinet drawer additions!! Been a long time coming! We’ll show you the details later this week. In the meantime, in today’s post we’re showing you how to fix large holes in drywall.
In the dining room, we’ve finished the electrical work. We have an inspection later this week and then we can begin the part I’ve really been looking forward to: building and installing the frames for the paneling. Before that though, we had to repair the walls from our trim removal and the wall surgery we performed last week. We had some major holes in our walls.
Here’s how I made those repairs… btw, there are a LOT of pictures! This is basically a general how to on fixing large drywall holes.
So, every hole will get a small piece of drywall inserted into it. The drywall needs something to screw into. If there’s nothing there, you need to add something. You could also use one of those metal mesh screens, but I’m personally not a fan of those. I think you get a better result using the method that follows. You can see in the photo below that the top hole has a piece of 2×4 that I’ve added. It’s only held in place by the screws directly above and below it.
With the 2×4 in place, now you can add the drywall. The drywall plugs I used are the very same ones I removed when I cut the holes. I didn’t throw them out because I knew they would go right back in!
To get that small 2×4 in the wall, it needs to be just a little bit longer than the opening. Any longer and you’ll have a hard time inserting it into the wall.
I used a set of channel locks to hold the piece in place while I screwed into it. I even made the hole a little bigger to accommodate the channel locks. Definitely worth it.
One the drywall plug is in, I add the mesh tape. You could also use paper, but the procedure would be slightly different. Plus, I think the mesh works better for repairs.
I could probably add some spackle to that hole below before I cover it with mesh, but it’s OK to skip it. If it were any bigger, I would open it up and use a bigger piece of drywall plug.
I’ll also need to cover that white strip below with spackle. The chair rail molding was there and when it was removed along with the caulk, it tore some paper. The future raised paneling will should cover it, but I thought I should repair it anyway, just in case.
My first coat of spackle on any large repair job or drywall installation for that matter, starts with setting type joint compound. This type of spackle is a powder that gets mixed with water and then chemically hardens in a certain preset amount of time. It comes in 20, 45 and 90 minute periods last time I checked The beauty of this product is that it sets so quickly, you can apply multiple coats and finish an entire room in one day. The air dry type stuff requires at least an overnight before you can sand it and apply another coat. One bag of this powdered stuff goes a loooonnggg way too. I’ll use about 2-3 cups of this compound for the first coat of this repair job and because it’s a powder, I can store it and use the rest whenever.
For the first coat, you just want to make sure all the tape gets covered. It’s not going to look good, but that’s OK. It’s going to take at least three coats.
For my second coat, I’m switching to an air dry type joint compound. The advantage of the air dry stuff is you have a little longer to work with it. I’m also going to use a wide knife. The one below is about 6″ wide and has seen plenty of action if you can’t tell.
There are two basic ways to apply joint compound. The first is shown below. You load up your spackle knife and apply it to the wall in one or two passes.
You repeat that until the entire area you’re working in is covered.
Then, you run the knife the other way in long, slow strokes. You want to try to feather the compound out at the edges. Again, it doesn’t have to be perfect, but you want to try to avoid major lines.
The other method it to apply and smooth it out in one stroke. This is a little trickier, but can be a little faster. When I load the knife up for this type of application, I try to keep the compound away from what will be the bottom edge, so it won’t drip onto the floor.
You can either start high or low and then draw the knife across the area.
Same basic finished look.
Once that coat has dried (at least overnight), it’s time for the last coat (you can do a 4th if you want). For this last coat, I bring out the big guns. This knife is 12″ or 14″ wide. I first use the knife to knock down any raised edges or dried blotches of compound. You don’t want to gouge the wall, but if you do a decent job of knocking down the lines you won’t need to sand.
This third coat also uses the air drying compound and the basic approach is the same as the last coat except for this application, the joint seams are much wider. Generally, you want your application area to be about twice the width of the knife you’re using.
After three coats of spackle on the holes and two on the chair rail section, this wall is ready for paneling!! I’ll probably do some light sanding where the top of the paneling will be, but that won’t be too hard.
Any wall repairs in your future? I sure hope not.
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