Everyone who lives in a home with walls that have been sheet rocked will at one time or another put a hole in one. We were working on a home in Scituate, where the painters had just finished a wall. Someone slammed the front door open and the doorknob went through the sheetrock. The home was due to go on the market the next day and had showings scheduled. The staging company supervisor, the listing agent and the homeowner were understandably upset and asked us if there was anything we could do. While this is certainly something that has a low level of difficulty, the main considerations were:

1. Time. It needed to be done right now.

2. Material. Not everyone has spare sheet rock, joint compound (“mud”) and sheet rocking tools on hand.

There are any number of methods for fixing holes in sheet rock. Depending upon the size of the hole, they vary from spackling nail holes to stuffing wads of newspaper into the hole and mudding over the paper to cutting back to the studs and replacing whole sections. Given the situation we faced, we chose to do what is called a “California patch”. Here's what we did and how to do it yourself.

You will need:

  • scrap sheet rock,
  • joint compound,
  • a razor knife with a new blade,
  • Kevlar gloves and safety glasses (use them!),
  • a pencil and a straight edge of some kind,
  • a keyhole or similar saw,
  • plus a putty knife with approximately a 1 ½” blade and a sheet rock knife with a 6” or so blade.

 

 

First, cut back the damaged section of wall. Cutting either a square or a rectangle will make the repair easier.

Measure the length and width of the cut carefully. In this case, it was 4 5/8” wide by 3” high.

Next, take a piece of scrap sheet rock that is a few inches larger than the hole you need to repair. Turn the repair piece facedown and draw lines to match the hole in the center of the scrap piece. Then, measure out an inch or so in all four directions and draw lines that match the shape of the inside box.

Using a razor knife and a straightedge as a guide (with the Kevlar gloves on your hands), carefully score the inside lines. Go over the scoring several times, going deeper with each pass. You do not have to go all the way through the sheet rock; if you do, throw it away and start over.

 

 

Move the repair piece so that the first cut edge is just hanging off the side of your work surface. Carefully snap the outside edge down so that the back paper and the gypsum (the white solid powdery stuff in the middle) breaks and the edge is hanging by the front surface paper. Then carefully peel away the outside piece of the rock. Continue on and do the other three sides until you have something matching the photo.

Carefully test-fit the patch you cut into the hole in the wall. It should be snug, but loose enough for joint compound (“mud”) to be applied.

The next step is to apply mud to the inside edges of the hole you cut in the wall, and to the paper backing on the patch you cut. Fit the patch into the hole.


 

 

 

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 Using your putty knife, spread the mud out from under the paper edges. Be careful not to put any pressure in the middle of the patch; it will push the patch inward. If you do, just pull it out and re-spread the mud. It's important that the mud fully cover the back of the paper edge you cut. Then, use the larger knife to spread some mud carefully across the whole patch, paying attention to the outside edges where they meet the wall. Stop right here and let the mud dry. It can take up to 24 hours
What you do at this point is up to you. If you want to leave the repair uncovered, it will need to be finished. There are how-to books available, as well as Internet articles. In this case, we were going to cover the repair, so finishing was unnecessary.

 

 We had gone to Wal Mart and bought a $3.00 wooden plaque in their Crafts department, plus a rubber wall mounted door stop from Lowe's. We mounted the door stop to the center of the plaque, and pre-drilled holes for the decorative brass screws (also available at any home warehouse or hardware store. Then we lined up the door stop with the exact spot the door knob would hit the wall and marked where the wall anchors would go.

Finally, we mounted the plaque to the wall with the brass screws, putting brass finish washers under the screw heads. The plaque was left loose, as the painters had to come back and paint the wall underneath, plus paint the plaque.

 
More questions? Call us at 339-469-1916, or email us