not really prepare the hole well enough to fix it properly so i'm here with my buddy williams
williams is a professional drywall guy he installs and repairs and patches drywall all day every day
what do we need to do to properly prep this hole before we start patching so the first thing that
you have to do is see what is the damage so right now from here it's gonna be just a hole
yeah that's it right but what you don't see is this what is behind okay so it's weak yeah yeah
so you have to rip off this okay so it looks like a lot of the damage here blew out on the back side
yeah and that's what we need to to clean up so we need to tear all that out there yeah
we've got we've got a big big chunk right here yes and then do we care about the the front uh
yes a little bit just let's see okay yeah so now that we've got all the loose stuff taken
away what's next try to make a square okay yeah so we need some new drywall to patch it
right so this stuff here i picked this up at home depot so we're going to use this and
cut a patch yeah yes okay so how do we do that what i'm going to do is try to cut my drywall
bigger a little bit bigger okay i just mark it okay and just go all the way through the right one
okay and now we do the same another way snap it actually you can do it
in the way you want to do it right let's do it this way just to have fun sure right now
you can have your how do you call this jab saw job that's what i call it or a drywall saw drywall
or so this i know is optional because i've done this type of work without using it but it makes
it so much easier you're gonna use it with your utility knife right it's okay just take a little
bit longer because you have to go like over and over and over again over and over doing this
but easier than that we can just use the jab saw if you've got one easy just there it goes
so now we've got our new hole cut are you going to test fit first right yeah yeah perfect so that
fits in there good the next step is backing okay so we need some backing to screw the new drywall
in but these are just big stick rulers they're big stir sticks for five gallon buckets but if i'm not
mistaken i think what we talked about is you can use anything right for a backer you can use some
two by fours if you have some stuff around string baseball lots of trim some baseball baseball
anything that you can use just to hold the new driver okay so now we've got some drywall screws
here for the driver for this i've just got a regular sub compact drill here just a regular
with a phillips bit so i actually asked him not to use the screw gun because i wanted to show
everybody's got one of these most likely or at least a screwdriver
worst case scenario um but i asked him to leave his screw gun in the truck so that we can just
use what i've got you know what everybody's got handy how much do we need right for just
you need just enough to hold the driver okay so probably i will say maybe around this way okay
okay one thing i don't go too deep right right and that is important so that actually
takes us to our second thing i want to talk about the mistake we tend to make as diyers
is we'll either not drive this in far enough or i'll drive it too far
so if you don't go far enough you will see the screw yeah so and it's going to be hard to
try to match the texture and try to make it everything clean and looks good if you go too deep
probably once you start to to put in the new piece it will fall off okay because it doesn't
have the structural integrity to actually hold on properly and you will be frustrated
all right so you got them just below the surface to where we can fill them in
and you can push it with your hands right make sure that's nice and secure
yeah this is strong enough let's go with the new piece
yeah right there all right so now we've done the prep so that takes care of problem number
one that we tend to make where we don't have it prepped we don't have it backed properly so that's
taken care of and then we also talked about the depth of our screws right getting that just right
so now we're ready to go on to number three mistake that we tend to make which is not
using the right tools for the job and the biggest culprit of that i've seen people trying to use
something like this to fix drywall and i've been guilty of this in the in the past as well
this is a this is plastic yeah which tends to scuff this one's got little nicks on it
then we might think we're better off using one of these a little putty knife and again just
too narrow to do the job properly so what do you recommend that we use as far as a knife for doing
a drywall normally something bigger at least since six inches it's gonna be okay for this size of a
patch so using the right size knives to actually do it i i tend to use something more like this
you're using a 10 is this right yeah this is a thing a 10 so i use a 12 often for these
because i need a little more help to properly spread out the mud and the texture and get it even
kind of feather it i find that makes it a little bit easier for me so that's that's the third
mistake that we tend to make is using the wrong tools the wrong knives and along with that the the
fourth one is not using the right mud there's so many muds to choose from so how do we know which
ones to use for a patch as williams explained it to me the green lid is the all-purpose
and this is the stuff that dries hardest so this is actually just great to use especially for large
applications but you want to use this as a base coat and keep in mind that this will take up to
24 hours to cure if not longer now this is great for large applications like new walls and things
like that but if you're doing a small patch you'll probably want to use the hot mud for some of your
base layers you can mix this up a lot faster it will set up you can do multiple coats within
an hour or two depending on which time you're comfortable with now both the all-purpose and
the hot mud dry very hard and they're difficult to sand which is why you want to put light layers
on underneath the topping should always be the blue lid you'll want to use either the plus 3 or
the topping joint compound because it dries a lot softer but it still does take a full day to fully
cure this is easy to sand and will make for great texture or a base coat for orange peel if you're
applying that when you're mixing up your mud you want a consistency somewhere between yogurt
and peanut butter it should be thick enough that you can spread it but not so runny that it drips
and now just fill the gaps
so you hold the knife against the uh place where you want to cut and then just tear okay
yeah still good
all right so walk us through you're covering
up the whole okay you're just doing all four sides okay nice thick coat
so now we go to the edge so you're feathering it out towards the edge
okay so you're applying pressure on the outside to smooth it out
and this one here
i know that you you're gonna see this line right don't worry about them right now mistake number
four is not only using the wrong mud but also getting our layers wrong as we've just seen
the first layer should really just be to get everything level with the surface of the wall
and then you apply your mesh tape or paper after that you apply a second layer and the
key here is to keep it thin you do not want to cake it on or lay it on too thick and if you do
just make sure to smooth it out and remove as much as necessary there may even be some tape
or paper visible through that first layer and that is okay it doesn't have to be perfect once that's
set up we can mix up a very small second batch and go apply a second layer on there and again we're
keeping this super thin and this one's going to be a little bit nicer than that first coat
but not much better nice and thin not too thick and making sure to cover everything this time
once that's had time to cure we can then apply the topping joint compound this is the blue lid
stuff that we're going to put on top and we want to get this one as smooth as possible and feather
it on the edges and you're progressively making each of these layers wider and wider
so that you blend it into the surrounding wall now the fifth and final mistake that we tend to
make is not taking the time to match the texture of the surrounding area when we do a patch repair
you can see here that he's just put a little bit of mud on the end of the knife and is dragging it
across to create a texture very similar to the holy smooth texture that i've got on my wall
he'll then feather everything out drag it across and then get a perfect match to the existing
texture that we see on the rest of the wall you can use this same technique for santa fe or
knock down texture if you have orange peel you want to make sure to get this part as smooth
as possible does not have to be perfect but as close as you can get it and then we'll spray
some texture on the next day so we'll circle back tomorrow and show you the finished result
alright so it's been almost 24 hours and we let the fan run on this all night to
make sure this is nice and hard and this is dry as can be so what's next to finish
this off okay just sand it does it matter what grit you're using here
120 220 something like that 22 40 249 okay around the number okay it's perfect okay
so this looks great we're already done and we're ready to prime and paint and get this all finished
up yeah yes okay so what would be different if we had orange peel or some other texture
if you have olympic orange peel you will do the same process and that's just a spray and so the
orange peel spray any tips or tricks with using this stuff try it in another place before you go
onto your wall okay so sample it somewhere else the other one i've run into is make
sure if you're doing this in cold weather make sure this is room temperature before you use it
yes because otherwise it will get a little cloggy and clumpy as it comes out and it won't do a great
job so make sure this is warmed up actually another tip is try to try at the store oh okay
before you buy it oh okay so make sure you don't have a bad can yeah so it happened a lot okay do
you need to do anything else after you spray it or is that the final step no it's the final step
okay so that's great the only thing is try to all the time go wider wider than your patch right so
that it blends into the existing stuff any final tips for those of us that are diy is trying to do
this kind of thing just take your time okay yeah take your time try to follow all the tips that
we already said that's it okay sounds good with williams here he's actually been a great help uh
helping us out with all these patches and showing us the pro tips if you live in utah along the
wasatch front and need some help with your drywall then i'll put his information in the description
below and if you want to learn more about some different types of patches and how to cover
five different holes from really big stuff to the really tiny stuff i've got another video that you
can check out to show you exactly how to do that i'm nils with learn to diy thanks for watching