How To Patch Drywall

How Do You Patch a Hole in Drywall? In this video, Drywall Shorty walks you through the DIY process of patching holes in your drywall around the house.

In addition to the LEVEL5 DIY Home Repair Hand Tool Set, Lydia uses the following to patch her drywall:

• Easy Sand 5-Minute
• Fiberglass Mesh Tape
• Cordless Power Drill
• All-Purpose Compound
• Razor Blade
• Water

Lydia begins by going through and cutting the dent with a razor blade and filling in the hole she carved out with some easy sand. Following this, she preps her All-Purpose Compound Mixture. Start off by pouring in your water and dumping in your mud. Use a drill, mini mixer and mud pan to prepare your drywall compound.

Then with your 6” Joint Knife go ahead and pack in that patch with the mud. Any loose patches you can use the corner of the blade to smooth it out. After your first patch let it dry and look for the next area that needs some work.

Using LEVEL5's 9-in-1 Painter's Tool, she fine tunes the area around the patch. Then, very lightly with her joint knife, she scraps the surface of the patch. Following this, she uses her fiberglass mesh tape and applies it over the patch using the joint knife to cut it. She recommends using green mesh tape so it sticks out more. Adding more compound, she mixes up more mud and uses the 6” Joint Knife to apply another coat of mud over the mesh tape until it's covered. Wait until this coat is dry and then you can move on.

For the wider drywall patching, she uses a wide taping knife and feathers out the next coat of mud. As you can see is there is some bubbling in the mud; this is caused by compound being applied to raw fresh drywall which then soaks in. When you seal it with paint it has no place to go and is sealed in so it creates bubbles in the finish but will eventually go away with enough coats of mud. She fixes this by giving it a scrape up with the taping knife and this replaces the bubbles with holes that can be filled in with another coat. Never be afraid to go wider with your knives with the bigger patches to avoid overlapping. Depending on the job it could take a few coats, just continue until it's flat and not bubbling.

A lot of work is in the prep in terms of these kinds of patching. It’s important to fill it in and keep it very flat to avoid any sort of bulging. When it comes to matching paint and you have a paint job that's a little sun damaged you can always take off a little paint chip and take it down to your local paint shop and they’ll match the color for you.

Now that the job is done, we wait for it to dry, texture it, and paint it.