Drywall Repair: When to Patch and When to Replace.

A doorknob goes through the wall, a tenant moves out and leaves forty anchor holes, or a brown ring shows up on the ceiling after a leak. Most drywall damage can be patched. Some of it should be cut out and replaced, and the difference comes down to how big the damage is, where it is, and whether the board got wet.

Small holes and dents: fill them

Nail holes, screw and anchor holes, and dents from furniture are filler work. Scrape off anything loose, press lightweight spackle or joint compound into the hole with a putty knife, let it dry, sand it flush and prime it before you paint. Deeper dents may need a second coat because the filler shrinks a little as it dries.

A nail pop, the small round bump where a nail has worked its way out of the stud, needs one more step. Drive a drywall screw into the stud an inch or two from the nail to pull the board tight, then set the old nail below the surface or pull it out, and fill both spots. If you only fill over the nail, the bump comes back.

Holes up to the size of a fist: patch them

A hole from a doorknob or a pulled-out fixture is too big for filler alone. Up to about 6 inches across, a self-adhesive mesh patch works: stick it over the hole, cover it with two or three thin coats of joint compound, feathering each one a few inches wider than the last, and sand between coats.

Drywall finishers have another method for holes in that range, called a California patch. Cut a square of new drywall about 2 inches larger than the hole on every side, score the back, and snap off the gypsum around the edge so only the face paper is left as a flange. Hold the core over the hole, trace around it, cut the wall along that line so the core fits snugly, and bed the paper flange in compound. It needs no backing and finishes flatter than a mesh patch.

Anything bigger gets a real piece of board. Cut the damaged area into a clean square or rectangle, screw wood strips inside the opening as backing, screw a new piece of the same thickness to them, then tape the seams and finish with three coats. Most interior walls are 1/2-inch board, and ceilings are often 5/8. The wall and ceiling between an attached garage and the house are a fire separation. Code calls for at least 1/2-inch board on the garage side and 5/8-inch Type X on the ceiling of a garage with rooms above it, so a patch there should match the board already in place and be taped and finished with no gaps.

When to replace a section of drywall

Patching stops making sense in four cases:

• the drywall got wet and is now soft, crumbly or swollen, or you can see or smell mold;
• a ceiling is sagging between the joists, which usually means water or failed fasteners;
• the damage runs across a seam or wraps around an outside corner, where the board has to be cut back to the framing and a bent corner bead replaced, or the repair cracks again;
• there are so many holes close together that finishing them one by one takes longer than hanging a new piece.

With water damage, drywall that was splashed with clean water and dried within a day usually stays. Drywall that sat wet, or got wet from a toilet, a sewer line or floodwater, has to come out. Water wicks up past the stain you can see, so the cut goes a foot or so above the highest wet spot, and the wet insulation behind it comes out too so the framing can dry. Our article on the first 48 hours after a leak covers that part. Fix the source of the water before any new board goes up.

A brown ring on board that is still firm and dry does not mean replacement. Seal it with a stain-blocking primer before you paint, because a water stain bleeds back through regular latex primer and paint.

1. Filled
2. Patched
3. Opened up

Matching orange peel and knockdown texture

Many walls and ceilings in Southern California homes have a sprayed texture, usually orange peel or knockdown, and a smooth patch shows through the paint on a textured wall. The texture has to be rebuilt over the patch with a spray can or a hopper gun and blended into the wall around it. Orange peel is sprayed on and left to dry; knockdown is sprayed in larger drops, left until the wet shine starts to fade, and then flattened with a wide knife before it dries. Practice on a scrap piece of drywall first, since too much texture is harder to fix than too little.

Then paint the whole wall from corner to corner. Touch-up paint over a patch dries with a slightly different sheen from the old paint around it and stays visible from an angle, even when the color is the same.

Doing it yourself or calling us

Filling a handful of nail holes before you repaint is a good weekend job. Call us when there are dozens of holes in a rental at move-out, when the damage is on a ceiling, when the wall is textured and the patch needs to blend in, or when the board got wet. Hanging and patching drywall is on our price list on the Services page, and the gallery has photos of drywall work from start to finish. If the damage came from a leak, our water damage repair page shows how we cut out wet drywall and rebuild a wall.

Related: What to Do in the First 48 Hours After a Leak · Handyman Services and Prices

Frequently asked questions

Got a hole you would rather not patch yourself? WestHills Contracting repairs drywall in homes and rentals across Riverside, San Diego and Orange County. Send us a photo or call 951-587-7633.