Dame-It-Yourself: Patch Up Pronto

Honey, I fixed the wall

By Sharon Hall
Published: Dec 14, 2007

We’ve all done it – move a piece of furniture or drag an over-packed suitcase down the stairs, and WHAM! We take a chunk out of the drywall. You want to shove a plant or a painting in the way, I know, but you know that sooner or later that hole’s going to need patching, and if you get a man in, as you’ve always done, it’s going to cost the earth. Well, fear not – patching dry wall is a piece of cake. With icing. (You’ll see)

SHOPPING:

All the ingredients are available at your local
Home Depot, Lowes or Osh.

1 Utility Knife
1 Wall Repair Patch
2 Sanding Blocks (80 coarse grit and 150 fine grit)
1 Scissor
1 Container Lightweight Drywall Compound (a.k.a “mud”)
2 Putty Knives (3 inch and 6 inch)
1 Mud Tray

TIDY: Cover the floor (and maybe furniture) to catch any stray mud or dust.

Step One:

Prepare the Surface.
Use the utility knife to cut away any rough edges from around the hole – don’t go mad, though, this isn’t the Shawshank Redemption. Don’t scrape a hole any bigger than the patch.

Step Two:

Fit the Patch.
Measure the wall repair patch against the hole to see how much you’ll need. Be a tad generous on all four sides so you have good coverage.

Step Three:

Trim and Place the Patch.
Cut the patch to the desired size and place it over the hole, adhesive side down (yes it has a sticky side – that’s how easy it is). Smooth it over from top to bottom.

Step Four:

Ice cake.
Take the 3 inch putty knife and add mud from the container to the mud tray, then splodge a generous first coat over the patch. It’s like icing a cake. Start on the wall area just above the patch, spread the mud up and down, then side to side and finally corner to corner. Try to do each spread in one stroke.

Step Five:

Wait it ou.
8 hours while the wall dries. Sounds like a long time, but seriously, you deserve a break. Besides, if it’s not as dry as a bone, step six is screwed.

Step Six:

Sand away.
Use the coarse side (80 grit) of the sanding block to sand over the area to smooth out any bumps or rough edges.

Step Seven:

More Coats.
Repeat Step Four, the cake Step, but this time with the wider (6 inch) putty knife. Then repeat Steps 5 and 6, only this time with the finer side (150 grit) of the sanding block. For the final coat, use the 6 inch putty knife again to apply a thin layer of mud twice the size of the original hole, applying just as you did in Step Four. Let dry and then give it a final sanding. Just remember that for the second and third coats the idea is to use thinner layers each time and apply them wider than the hole to seamlessly blend with the wall.

Step Eight:

Glass of wine.
There, that wasn’t so bad! Now, all you need to do is paint it. We’ll do painting next month.

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