If you have a house that has the acoustical texture (aka popcorn texture or cottage cheese) on your drywall ceiling, you know what a pain it can be if you get a stain on the ceiling. A lot of older houses have this texture and it is repaired differently that typical orange peel or knock down texture.
When you get a leak on your popcorn-textured ceiling, sometimes the texture will peel off of the drywall and sometimes it will stay but turn brown. It will look as if someone spilled coffee on your ceiling. Assuming it was just a one-time leak, the area will be dry but unsightly, but make sure the source of the leak was fixed before you start repairing the ceiling as you only want to do this repair one time.
If the popcorn texture is still on the ceiling but you have a stain, try sealing the stain with Kilz or some type of stain sealer. Use a spray can rather than rolling or brushing it on the surface as popcorn has a tendency to fall off of the ceiling when disturbed. You can spray on a few coats after each has dried and then paint it to match, or paint the entire ceiling.
If you have popcorn texture that has fallen from the ceiling, you can seal the area and use a spray can product to patch the area. You can buy popcorn texture in a can. One such product is called “Up Shot” and you hold the can away from the ceiling and squeeze the trigger in short bursts as you move the can. It’s a good idea to go light on the trigger as you don’t want to make a stalactite on your ceiling. Once you have a good blended patch, you can paint it after it dries.
If you've ever done any drywall work, you know it can be a messy job. Drywall dust is a sticky dust that avoids being picked by brooms or vacuums. So cutting drywall with a minimum of dust is important, especially when you are working in a customer's house.
Drywall comes in sheets of 4'x8' and larger, although some home centers sell smaller pieces for small homeowner jobs. There are different methods of cutting drywall depending on the application.
To cut a sheet of drywall, it is easiest to score one side of the drywall. Cut through the paper on one side of the sheet and then snap the drywall sheet along the score line. Depending on whether you are working alone or with a partner, you can use the weight of the sheet to snap the line. By scoring deeper into the sheet, you have better control over the finished edge, but a rasp will take care of any rough edges. This is referred to as the "score and snap" method. Once you snap the drywall, just cut the paper on the other side of the sheet. Remember though, installing drywall is not a job of absolute perfection. That is left to when you finish the job with skim coats and drywall texture.
If you are working around pipes and have to cut a circle in a sheet, you can use a hole saw or a drywall saw. These will each leave dust on the floor, so it's a good idea to cut it in the garage or outside. A drywall saw is a pointed saw that you push through the drywall sheet to start the cut. A hole saw cuts a perfect circle. It is chucked in a drill and cuts very quickly.
As a handyman service, we see water damage in houses almost daily, and much of it is caused simply by neglecting routine maintenance items. When caulking starts cracking or peeling up in a shower, it's time to replace it. If you let it continue, water will creep behind the caulking and into the drywall causing it to swell. From here, things only get worse, with tiles falling off and the possibility of mold growth. In wet areas like this, you should be using cement board.
Greenboard has the same gypsum material as drywall with the exception that greenboard has a waxy paper on the outside rather than regular paper. This waxy paper helps the greenboard to resist water. As it's name implies, greenboard is green in color. Greenboard is meant for damp locations and is "water resistant". It is not water proof as many people falsely believe.
For wet locations such as a shower, cement board is the preferred material. You can buy it at home centers under the name "Wonderboard". Greenboard costs slightly more than regular drywall, and cement board is at the top of the pricing structure. Although green board is frequently used in wet locations, you might consider spending the extra money for the cement board.
We were asked by a customer to do some drywall repair that had been damaged by the backs of some chairs. These were wooded chairs that when people would push away from the dinner table the chairs would ram into the drywall and chip away the paint and texture. Sure, this handyman can do that. However, there may be a better solution.
Repairing the drywall will look great....until someone rams the same chair into the same spot...again and again. It seems to me that installing some chair rail is a great option.
Chair rail will not only cover the damage and be more resistant than drywall, but it will make future damage easy to repair. You can buy a variety of sizes and profiles of chair rail to fit against the wall. In this case, simply buy a height that will cover the repetitive damage, but also works will with the size of the room. If the ceilings are high, you can go with a taller chair rail. If you have 8 foot ceilings, try to minimize the height so as not to make the room appear small.
You can paint the chair rail before you install it, nail it to the wall, and then fill and touch up the nail holes. The next time someone damages that area of the wall, the wood chair rail will probably be undamaged, but when it gets time to repair it, just fill in the dings and touch up the paint.
Cutting open a wall to repair a plumbing leak is a pretty big deal. These holes can be a few inches or a few feet large. Once you have repaired the plumbing issue, you have to contend with the drywall repair. That means a good patch, matching the texture, and matching the paint.
If you want to avoid all the drywall headaches, you can always install an access panel. You wouldn't want this in a conspicuous spot, but it works very well in certain applications. For example, when replacing a shower valve in the wall, it is common to cut the wall open. Your options are either remove and replace ceramic shower tiles, or cut the drywall on the backside of the shower. If the backside of the shower is, for example, in a closet, this is an ideal spot for a plumbing access panel.
The panel will likely be hidden by hanging clothes anyway, and if you ever have a problem with the valve again, you can just open the door on the panel and fix it without having to go through the drywall issues again.
The plumbing access panel is a small door mounted on a frame. The frame is fairly wide compared to the door which allows it to cover a variety of holes from around 6-inches to about 15-inches. It can save a lot of time and frustration. You can paint them to match the color of the wall, or they also come in stainless steel.
Some homeowners like the idea of using the attic for storage space, and some choose to install an attic ladder, but you can't just leave a big hole in your ceiling.
The hole in the garage ceiling breaches the fire rating, and restoring the rating will take measures that you may prefer not to do. Many homeowners enjoy the attic's storage capacity, but many are unaware of the increased fire risk. It's always safer to repair the fire rating of the ceiling rather than just cover the hole.
It is a code requirement to use fire-rated drywall in the ceiling of your garage. The drywall is five-eighths of an inch thick and has "type-x" stamped on it. It also has noncombustible fibers added to it to achieve fire-resistance ratings, and its thickness slows the transfer of heat during exposure to fire.
If you have a big hole in your ceiling and a fire starts in the garage, it can get into the attic. You can buy a fire-rated access door, but these are typically special-order items and cost several hundred dollars. They are fairly easy to install though.
The fact that you want to cover the hole for cosmetic purposes is personal preference, just be aware that the danger of an attic fire exists.
So, to make your ceiling hole semi-attractive again, you will need a piece of type-x drywall, as well as some molding to hold it in place. Realize that using the fire-resistant drywall panel alone isn't going to restore the fire rating. There will be a gap around the perimeter of the panel, and the panel will be held in place with wood molding.
You want the drywall panel to be slightly smaller than the actuall hole in your ceiling. You can make the panel one-half inch smaller in both length and width, so that when you do go into the attic, the panel will be easy to remove.
You can easily cut the drywall with a drywall saw, or you can use a utility knife and score the paper on one side, break the drywall along the score line, and then cut the paper on the back side.
To hold the panel in place, buy some molding and cut it to fit. You want the molding to have a one-half inch lip along the inside perimeter of the opening. That way, the drywall panel will rest on it as it sits inside the opening. Try using a miter saw and cut 45-degree angles at the ends for square corners and a clean appearance.
Nail the molding to the ceiling and into the ceiling joists so that the nail penetrates the joist by at least three-quarters of an inch. If you feel froggy, you can texture the drywall and paint it to match the surrounding ceiling.
If you've ever had to patch drywall, you know that it is a process. After you patch the hole, you have to tape the patch and float out some drywall mud (compound). Typically you have to sand the mud after it dries to level out the patch with the surrounding area. Then you can texture the patch, if necessary.
Sanding the patch is a very messy job. If you are careful, you may not have much sanding to do. If at the end of the mud job you can smooth out the mud and get most of it off with your taping knife, you may not have much to sand away anyway.
The sanded drywall mud is a heavy dust that seems to cake on everywhere it lands. The cleanup of sanded drywall mud is awful. It will clog vacuum filters, and you will have to sweep it off of hard surfaces many times. One alternative is to use a damp sponge. You can wring out a sponge until there is no water left in it, and then use a slight swirling motion on the mud. When the sponge gets filled with drywall mud, dunk it in a bucket of water and again wring it out until it is just damp. This will keep the clean up to a minimum. Once the drywall patch is flat, you can texture and paint it. Here is some additional information on drywall repairs.
Drywall corners take a beating. Whether they form a 90-degree corner or have rounded bull nose they all dent when little Johnny swings a toy into it, or runs a wagon into it, or...you get the picture. Fortunately, they aren't difficult to repair...all you need is a little drywall mud, some texture, and paint.
Whether the corners are square or rounded, the corners are metal and you basically want to correct any metal that is sticking out...you want to hammer it back into place and fill in the gaps with drywall mud. If you have a deformed piece of metal jutting out, you can tap it into place with a hammer. If the metal corner is torn you can use a standard screwdriver or chisel and place it back into the plane of the wall. Hold a ruler or yardstick against the wall and let the end of it stick out past the wall. If you can move the yardstick up and down the wall and the damaged metal doesn't touch the yardstick, you are good to go. Do this on the intersecting wall also.
Get out the drywall mud and fill in the damaged areas. Once that dries, you can texture it and then paint it. Here is some information on how to repair drywall and texture it.
Matching paint is tough. Two weeks ago I wrote about matching exterior paint for stucco. Well, more often I find myself having to match interior paint for a drywall repair, or just freshening dirty walls. You can have a perfect drywall patch and poor matching paint and the wall patch will look terrible. You can have a mediocre drywall patch and perfect paint, and the result is very nice. So how do you get a good paint match?
Most homeowners don't know how to color paint, which is why they make computers to do this for us. As long as the machine has been properly calibrated, the quarter-size sample you bring in can be matched. If you don't have a piece of broken drywall (that has the correct paint on it) laying around from your drywall patch, here is a little trick. You can go to an inconspicuous area, like a closet or down low on the wall, and cut out a paint sample. Now when I say cut out, I'm taking about making a shallow cut in the drywall just deep enough to peel off the paint and the top layer of drywall paper. Do this by using a utility knife and cutting about 1/16" deep into the drywall. This will cut through the paint, texture, and top layer of drywall paper. Make a cut about 1 ½" square...this will be big enough for the computer to match. Then take the blade and lift the corner of the cut and gently peel it off.
So you will have another small drywall blemish to fix and texture, but at least the paint should be a very good match. Here is some information on repairing drywall.
A drywall patch for an inexperienced homeowner can leave your knees knocking. There is a trick though that can shave a little time and apprehension off of your job. When I say small, I mean about 4 inches or less, so a hole caused by a doorknob is perfect. They sell screens that go right over the hole, but I prefer to use a drywall plug.
First off you want to clean up the hole. Cut the drywall hole larger ( I know it sounds counterproductive)in the shape of a square. Now you will need a piece of drywall (the same thickness as the piece you're working on, either ½ inch or 5/8 inch) 3 inches larger than the size of the hole you are patching. That means if your hole is 4 inches square, use a piece 7 inches square. We are going to make this 7 inch piece of drywall fit into this 4 inch hole...sort of.
Normally, you would screw a couple of wood boards behind the hole so the drywall patch has something to screw into. Then you would use tape (either paper or fiberglass) to cover the edges and float out the drywall compound (aka mud). However, with the plug method, you can bypass the wood and the tape.
Here's how you do it. Lets assume the hole is 4 inches. With your 7 inch piece of drywall you will remove everything but a 4 inch square in the middle, that means we will take off 1 ½ inches from each side of the piece. Use a utility knife and score the back side of the drywall piece. Then snap the drywall and pull it away from the paper face. You will do this on all 4 sides and when done you will have a flap of paper that is connected to the patch. This flap will act as the tape.
Butter up the flaps and smoosh it the hole. Once you push it in, the drywall compound will squeeze out around the perimeter of the patch. Use a drywall knife or putty knife and float it out. After it dries you can clean up the perimeter, texture and paint. Here are some details on how to texture drywall.