Tips for Patching Holes in Drywall
The tools you will need for repairing these problems are a razor knife, a putty knife, drywall paste, a measuring tape, a few nails, a sanding block, and more than likely a couple of pieces of drywall. For really big holes you may want to have a screw gun and some drywall screws handy. In addition it will always help to have a few paper towels or spare cloths handy to wipe up the mess. Another helpful item is a drop cloth because drywall paste is hard to get out of a carpet.
When patching small cracks or holes you can take a little bit of paste on a putty knife and scrape it into the hole, trying not to leave to much of the paste on the wall itself. It will dry in a few hours or overnight and you can run the sanding block over it to smooth it out. Then wipe it down before painting. After you have painted you cannot tell where the holes were.
In many cases the holes are larger and you cannot just smear drywall paste into them. There are many reasons for this. It will take a lot longer to dry that much paste, there is no backing to it and the mud will fall through or its just sloppy. When you come across a small hole you want to expand it just enough to make a square. Use your tape measure to measure the opening making the smallest square possible. Use your razor knife and one of the small blocks to score lines around the hole. Then make the square you need. Once you have this square hold instead of a crack there are two ways you can patch it. One is to make the drywall piece you cut slightly larger than the square, maneuver it through the hole. Once you have it in the hole you attach it to the sides using a screw, then fill the area with paste. Once it has dried you sand it and then you are done. For small holes this is fine it provides a backing to the drywall paste and successfully allows you to patch the wall.
However, in a much larger hole you will need more drywall. In this case you can attach a small block to each of the sides of your wall with drywall screws. This block will provide a wood backing you can screw new drywall onto. When you have cut the piece of drywall it may be a good idea to put a screw in the middle to hold back the drywall a little. This will allow for the drywall screws to not put to much pressure on your wood block until it has bit into the wood. At this point your patching a much smaller area in each of the cracks. You will still need to let it stand overnight and you will need to sand it. More than likely you will need to reapply some paste and sand again.
With a little effort and time all of the holes in your wall will be patched and fixed. The walls should be smooth as long as you made sure to wipe away any excess paste. At this point you can either apply enough paint to go over any patches or you can repaint the whole wall.
