DRYWALL Anchors and SPACKLE

Do you have nails, screws, mollies and misc holes in your walls? To get prepared to paint doesn't need to be intimidating. It is actually very easy.

Transcript: 

Drywall Anchors and Spackle

Okay, so today we're in one of our rehab jobs. We have to make it rent-ready and take all of the screws and mollies out of the walls to get it ready for paint. It's going to require some prep, spackling, and repairing these holes. So, the first thing we're going to do is take these screws and mollies out. We see we've got two holes that are just ready to spackle, and that's all we're going to do – use spackle. There's no need to use anything else.

Here, we have to take the screws and the mollies out. They might come out easy, or it might be a little difficult to get the mollies out. If that's true, we just push the mollies in once the screw is out. So, we've got these four holes, and we're going to have my assistant do a little bit of this work today. Let's give her our attention and see if she can get this done.

Okay, so Amber, today you have a little bit of a challenge. We're going to step you through this and instruct you on this. The first thing we need to do is take the screws out of those mollies. You have two of them, so why don't you get the tool you think you need to do that with? It's on our little bench to the side. Let's see what that is. Yes, that is a Phillips screwdriver.

So, you've got two screws. See if you can take those out of the wall. Go ahead and try to unscrew those and let's see how well that goes. We might need...

Okay, so now you have a molly without the screw. See if you can pull that molly out of there, Amber. Oh, it just came right out. Really nice. Now let's do that with the second screw and see if you can pull that molly out as well. Okay, excellent.

So now we have these four holes, and we need to do a little something more with them before we put the spackle in. All right, Amber, there's a tool on our bench called a five-way.

Okay, excellent. Let's see that for those who are watching.

Okay, excellent. Now you have a sanding block on your bench. Go ahead and sand each area just so that we make sure it's smooth.

[Applause]

Okay, excellent job. All right, so now let me show you what we're going to do. I'm going to give you a little instruction. Okay, this is our spackle. It's a fast-dry product for larger drywall repairs. So, I have no problem with these bigger holes using the spackle. It works really well for repairs like this. No need to get drywall mud or a quick-set mud or get into any of that mess. The tool we're going to use is just a little spackle knife. It's steel and has a little flex to it. It's got a little hammer head on it if we need to hammer something, but I don't think we need to do that.

So, Amber, I'm going to do one, and I'm going to show you how I do it. I just get a little bit of spackle on my knife, and I'm going to pack that in there really well, move it around a couple of different ways.

Okay, that's basically all you need to do. Then you can clean it off on the bucket. So again, you just get a little bit. You don't need a lot. Now, let's watch you do those other three. Excellent.

Now one of the keys is you're not leaving big ridges. You're just filling the hole. We may put an extra little coat on these as we see them dry. They dry in about 30 minutes. So go ahead and get those other two. Excellent, one more, and then we'll be ready to let that dry. It dries in about 30 minutes, so we'll be able to come back and sand it and see if it needs any more filler right there.

Okay, so we've run into a little bit of a problem. In the wall that Amber did, the mollies came out really easy. But this molly is not coming out very easy. In fact, I took a close-up picture. We'll show that picture for those watching. But now I have a different challenge. What do I do to get that molly either out of the wall or out of the way of the spackle?

The first thing I'm going to do is use this five-way. It's got that nice sharp blade at the top, and I'm just going to scrape it to get the head off. Okay, that took the head of that molly off. Now what I'm going to do is take a screwdriver, a flathead screwdriver, and I'm going to pound it in. That went all the way through the wall, so now the molly is out of the way, and I can scrape it. We'll have Amber sand it, and then we'll spackle it. That's how you get rid of those small mollies. Some mollies are bigger, and if they are, you have to use the correct screwdriver, maybe a bigger head, to make sure you get that molly pounded into the wall. If you can't get it out, don't dig it out, don't fight it, don't make the hole bigger. It's just as simple as that to get the molly out of the way for your spackle.

Right, so on this rent-ready, we ran into a little room that had paneling on it and screws and mollies. So, that's a little bit different than working with plaster, but we're going to treat it the same way. Let's see how this goes. I'm going to take care of this. We're going to unscrew the screw from there, and when I get the screw out just a certain length like that, I'm going to see if I can pull on it and bring the molly out with me. Sure enough, that's what I did. Keep in mind, don't take the screw all the way out. You can try to pull that molly out with the screw, and that worked pretty good. Let's see how this other one goes.

Actually, this screw head is stripped, so it's taking more pressure on my screwdriver to get it out. And just to show a different option instead of pulling it out, you get it out and use a pair of pliers and get a good grip on that. See if you can pull the whole thing out, and that did that as well too.

All right, so let's see how this one goes. You want to bring the screw out so that it's almost out of the molly but still has enough bite so that you can use it to pull. I'm going to use my pliers again, and I'm going to pull that one out. So now, what do we do with this? Well, we actually are going to do the same type of prep on this as we did on the ones with plaster. I'm going to take our five-way, and I'm going to scrape all that loose off of there. Okay, then we're going to sand that. I don't have my sanding block with me at the moment, but we're going to sand that, and then we're going to spackle it, just like we do the plaster wall.

All right, so not much time has passed, about half an hour, 40 minutes, and we're ready to sand the first spots that we spackled. So, I'm just going to use a 3M sanding block. Okay, and we're just going to give it a really light sand, not a lot. Basically, that's all you need to do because we didn't leave ridges on it. Now if you're not happy with the way it looks, if it looks like it needs a little more coat, just put another nice little coat on it, tight coat, avoid ridges, sand that again, and you're ready to paint.