3 Extremely Important Techniques For Repairing Drywall

Painting your home is an exciting time. You are looking forward to getting some new, fresh colours on the walls, modernising your house, and hopefully adding some value to it. However, before you can start to actually paint, you will have to tackle the issue of repairing the walls. This means filling nail holes, skimming roughness, filling cracks, and sometimes having to spend a lot of time re-drywalling some holes because they are very large. This is not an easy task and there are quite frankly a lot of ways to mess this up. In this article we are going to discuss three proper techniques to Repairing Drywall in your house.

1.) The Preparation.

Before you can start trowelling on any compound, you need to stop, and prep the surface you are about to repair. What do I mean by this? Essentially, you have to sand and blow any dust off the area you are about to hit with compound. This will allow your new drywall compound to adhere to the walls in the best way possible. On a molecular level, this allows more ways for the compound to grab on to the wall. Also, it is very important to remember a saying that an experienced Drywaller once told me, “You cant fill a bump, you can only fill a hole”. So if there are any bumps on the area you are about to repair, remove them. You can chip them off, take the end of a screw driver and push it into the wall, whatever you need to do. Because your compound can only fill holes, It cant repair bumps.

2.) Don’t try to finish in One Coat.

This one is pretty self explanatory, but you would be surprised how many times people mess up a repair job because they want to get it done in one coat. Drywall compound is not made for 1 coat coverage. Especially when dealing with nail holes or larger holes. It will always shrink into the hole as it dries. The only way to fix this is by doing a second coat. This is probably the number 1 secret that all drywallers know. Instead of 1 thick coat, do 2 or 3, very thin coats. It will help the entire repair blend into the wall and help you out come the final technique.

We have done some work in Kitchener Ontario, in one of the oldest buildings in the city, The York Queen on Queen Street. Its so old that the plaster in many areas has “popped” and sometimes needs to be removed and I’m left filling a 1’x2’ hole that is half an inch deep. These repairs sometimes take 5 or 6 thin coats. But without a doubt it is worth it, because after we paint them, they disappear as if there was no repair done at all.

3.) Sanding.

Sanding is the easiest, yet most important aspect of drywall repairs. Because after you sand, that’s it, its your finished product. It is what you are going to prime, and then paint. So it is very important to get this right. In order to explain this best, lets pretend your drywall repair is shaped like a pizza. Square or round, we can all visualize a pizza. The most important part to sand down is the crust. So start there, and then slowly move your way into the middle of the pizza. As you move your way toward the middle, you don’t need to push so hard, or hard at all. In order to make your patch disappear, you want the edge to be flat to the wall, a smooth ascent to the middle, and then a smooth decent to the other edge that is flat on the wall. When you sand using this technique, it makes it very hard for your eye to catch that there was a repair done on that wall.

So there you go, my 3 most important techniques to Repairing Drywall. When you combine all 3 of these techniques to repairing walls in your home, you can be confident that things will go well. It is a process that takes time, but the rewards are worth it. If you have any more questions regarding repairs, or other painter related issues, don’t hesitate to contact Kitcheners Premier Painters, LT Painting.