DRYWALL PATCH gone bad
It started out just small patch that should have taken an hour. It turned into a monster that took 3 hours.
Transcript:
Drywall Patch Gone Bad
Okay, so we have a wall repair we have to do today, and the walls are a little challenging. There's a texture on the wall that we have to try to match, which is typically difficult, but we're going to do our best. We have an idea; I want to fast track this job, so I'm going to use Durabond 20, and we're going to dry it quickly with a hairdryer. But first, I want to assess exactly how extensive this repair is going to be.
Now I can feel this right here, and there's a bubble there, which means there's some compromise. So I'm going to take a five-way and I'm going to dig into that. As you can see, it's getting extensive, so I just want to make sure I take the loose stuff off, and I don't want to get buried here. You know, so I don't want to spend too much time. I'm going to use Durabond to patch it, but as you can see, it's starting to create a little bit of a problem here. I want to make sure that I get the loose stuff off because if you don't, you're going to have the same issue. And it looks like I'm going to have a lot of fun on this patch. Well, I got pretty big on me, didn't it? And I'm not done. So I'm going to have to take that off at this point. Now, see that? Okay, so that grew exponentially, but I still have my plan to fix it and repair it, and I think I'm done. A little more here, so I'll get that taken off. We'll clean up around the box, get all that cleaned up there. Just make sure I'd rather take a little more off than have a problem after I'm done patching.
At this point, a little more doesn't really hurt, does it? Oh, okay, so I think I'm done with the prep here. So I'm going to do something I wasn't planning on doing. I'm going to put a little mesh around these spots here, and then I'm going to Durabond all of that. Actually, I'm not sure. That's just the paint coming off there; that's all that really is. The plaster is fine underneath it; it's just really the paint that we're having an issue with. So, you know, somehow it didn't adhere correctly, so we're going to fix that. Let me go get my tape, and we're going to start mixing Durabond, and we're going to start working on this patch. Alright, so what I've decided to do here is I'm going to put mesh tape along the edge of all of this. The paint is pretty stable; I just said I'm not going to go any further because this isn't bubbling up. It's okay. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take my mesh tape, and I'm going to use a pair of scissors and the utility knife against the wall. I don't want to score the wall, but I do want to cut my mesh tape. Now what I'm going to do is I'm going to put that up here, just like that, and I'm going to use my scissors to cut through the middle of this. The reason why I'm doing this is that I don't want that full piece of mesh on the edge; I just need a little bit to hide that edge and adhere that to the wall. So I'm just going to take my scissors and cut right up through the middle or close to it. It doesn't need to be exactly in the middle, okay, and I'm going to put that over there. Okay, so now I'm going to just going to cut little pieces. Okay, and I'm going to use my scissors which help avoid fray on my fiberglass mesh, and I'm just going to lightly adhere that to the wall. Sometimes it has a hard time sticking, and that's true if it does. Then I'll deal with that in another portion of this video, how I handle that. I may have to put a little bit of mud in some real particular spots that are finding it difficult to adhere to it, but if I'm just impatient and I just press it, I don't want to rub too much like that. I'm just pressing it in, and as you see, this is all I'm going to do. I'm just cutting my lengths of my half-width mesh, and I'm just putting it over the edge. And as you can see, there's a nice pattern on these walls, okay, but this definitely was a repair that needed to happen. Okay, so I'm going to pat that in there, pat that in there, and just cut the trim, and this little piece will work really nicely right there. So now I take my next piece, and that's what I do. I just run it across there, cut it with my scissors, tap it in, run it across, tap it in. Okay, run it across, just take it as far as I can, tap it, and make sure it adheres. So I'm going to finish up doing this, and then I'll show you. I'll get my mud mixed up, and then we'll show you how we bet all of this. Okay, so now what I've done is I stabilized everything. This is fine; everything is structurally fine. And I'll have Amber zoom in for us, and you can trace and see what I did. I took the little half pieces of mesh and I stabilized the edge all along the patch and the repair. So now what I'm going to do is I'm going to go mix my Durabond, and we'll show you how I prep this wall so that we can get it painted.
So I've got my mud mixed up; this is Durabond 20. So all I really want to do is bed this in. That's all I really want to do; I'm not going to spend a lot of time with it. I am going to put a heavier coat on it when I come back, but right now, that's all I want to do. Now I want to try to make sure there's no big ridges when I do that, so all I'm doing is covering that little piece of mesh, and we're just going to stabilize that whole edge there. Then I wipe not all of it off, but most of it. I just want to make sure I don't leave any ridges anywhere. Okay, so down here I'm going to do the same thing, just a little bit of mud to cover all of the mesh tape. Be very careful around that box; if it's hot, you don't want to touch it with your knife because you'll get a good zinger there. Okay, so now I'm going to come over here, and I'm going to keep working in the same direction. I'm just going to put it on there, wipe most of it off. Okay, so that's basically all I'm going to do with that, and I think I'm going to run some like this as well to try to... kind of smooth it off completely, but it'll get those all the big groove issues out of the wall because you can't see a lot of that; you see a little bit of it. Okay, so now I'm just going to wipe all that off, make sure I don't have any big ridges.
So, okay, I am going to put another coat on this, so any little imperfections or anything that we got going on there, I'll be able to sand out and fix a little bit. So now I'm just going to lightly sand the edges. So all I want to do is just lightly sand any ridge that's there. I'm going to do the field; I'm just going to sand it just a little bit to clean it up, so there's no big ridge towards the wall bit of that. So there we go; just get those little ridges off, just a little edge. But it's nice and clean and so with that being done, I'm going to mix up just a little bit more Durabond. There are a couple little rough spots that I'm going to touch up, and then we'll be ready to paint.
Okay, so now I want to test out a couple spots with my paint. I've got a little paint roller for rough or semi-rough surfaces, which this is. I don't need to get a big roller, and I just have a little Wooster cup that's what I'm using. So I'm just going to get a little bit; I'm thinking of putting some sand in this paint because the texture is so rough here on the wall, and that might help a little bit. But I'm just going to put a little bit of paint on here, and it looks like the texture, the lines in the wall are going to look okay, but I think I am going to go ahead and put a little sand in this paint.
Now what the sand is going to do is it's going to rough it up and give it some extra texture. So we're going to mix that in real well, and then I could actually put a little more in there. Mix that in nice with my roller. Okay, now let's see how this works. So we're just going to... Oh, and you can see the sand in it. So that helps considerably, and then because there's different textures here and this is almost like a primer, is what this really is.
Okay, I'm just going to go ahead and commit to this; we're going to use this paint, and I'm just going to do this. This is the same color, by the way. So we're just going to put a nice primer on it, then we're going to blow dry it, and we're going to get our final coat on it this afternoon. So the drywall, the Durabond, does soak that paint up, so I'm going to go through a little bit just on this primer coat, but it's working good. I'm not so concerned about direction because the pattern on the wall is a multiple direction as well. So that's not too much of a problem.
Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and finish up this primer coat, and we'll be back in a little bit to put another coat on it. Okay, so we're going to be ready to put another coat on. Let's get started, load my roller up. Okay, and again, I'm not worried about direction because the pattern on the wall is definitely different. So I can go in different directions; just make sure my edges are feathered into the paint above. The second coat of sand into my paint is helping a lot with the roughness of the wall because it just... We want to match that the best we can, and that's doing pretty good, actually, so I'll feather that in a little bit, the best we can, just kind of fade that into the existing paint, get those ridges off of there, and that will dry nice and faded into that. So you won't hardly even tell from a paint perspective that there was a patch, and if I want to, I can actually put a little paint on a brush; it's going to have the sand in it, and then I can do a little more swirl.
Okay, just lightly, and that puts some brush lines in the paint, which kind of also match the wall that we're painting to. Filter those lines nice. Okay, so that's what I'm going to do now. I got to get a little more paint in my bucket and add a little more sand, so we're going to apply a dryer to this again when we're done, and then we'll show you the finished product.