How To Repair Drywall Hole With A California Patch

This is how to repair fix or patch a hole in the drywall with what we call a California patch. 

This patch is for small to medium size hole!!!

APPLYING THE DRYWALL PATCH :

The California Patch is good to repair small to medium size drywall holes, today we have a petty small hole that the electricians had to cut out, so we're going to fix that.

To start off your going to need a piece of drywall, one that's a good size bigger then the hole, we need more then enough board for us to work with. If ever you need some drywall for a repair, I'm sure you can always take a drive by some construction site, and ask if you could have a piece of drywall from the scrap pile. I'm sure they will be happy to give you a piece of scrap to fix your problem. We need some sort of backing in our hole, you cant just put tape over it unless the hole is real small. If you put only paper over a bigger hole, later on when you apply paint your going to have problems, and if anyone ever was to bump that area the paper would break or the paint would flake, so yea we need some sort of board in our hole. I usually would like to make my hole that I'm patching a square, so that its easier to cut a piece that fits.

So if you watch the video you'll see that we do some slices in the back side of the board so that we can break the board off into piece, making easier for us to break. This is a good how to repair drywall method. So like in the video you slowly remove drywall from the front paper until you come close to the size you need it to fit into your hole. When you get close to the size you need it to be, you can go and try to make the piece fit, then see how much more you need to take off until the piece fits into the hole, it doesn't have to fit perfectly. Make sure you watch the video so you understand what I'm trying to say.

Once your piece is fitting into your hole, your done the hard part. Make sure you use TAPING MUD to apply the patch, it has glue in it and sticks much better to painted surfaces, you don't want dry tapes. Make sure you apply mud to all the areas that is going to be in contact with the wall. Apply lots of mud, we will be removing most of it with our 5" Hammerend Taping Knives afterwards, apply the mud to both the back side of the paper, and the wall itself. Slap your California patch into the hole now, using your 5" Hammerend Taping Knives were your going to squish the mud out from behind that paper, slowly work it from one side to the other until it looks fairly even and the paper is all adhere to the wall. It doesn't have to be nice, make sure you leave some mud behind the paper, if you press to hard all the mud will come out which it will still look wet but it wont hold, and your going to have a dry tape. We're going to give this another 2 coats after with some sanding involved, so it doesn't have to be good looking right now.

APPLYING YOUR FIRST COAT :

We've waited overnight and our patch has hardened, we are now going to apply our first coat. Jess is using his 6" Hammerend Putty Knives today to apply his coat because of the phone jack near the patch, but usually we would use a hawk and trowel. We are using green finishing mud from Westrock to give our first coat. We're going to give it a real rough coat today, all we really need to do is make sure that there's a lot of mud on our patch, because were gonna sand it down to what we think is flat for the second coat. If there's not enough mud and you go to sand before your second coat, your going to have problems your tapes are going to show through.

So start by putting the mud on before you try to make it nice, just worry about having enough mud on, before you worry about making it nice. Its easy to sand a little but adding more mud requires a lot of time to dry. Once you got enough mud on then you feather the edges, FEATHER THE SIDES FIRST, and make a last pass with your knife in the middle not pressing to hard, like shown in the video. Its better if your last pass with your knife is in the middle because all the mud wont be humped in the middle. DON'T WORRY ABOUT THE PIN HOLES, there's going to be a lot of pin holes in your mud because of the paint on the wall. After a little sanding and one more coat of mud, with a little secret trick we're going to teach you in video 3, all the pin holes will be gone, I promise :).

You may also need a third coat on some patches, its doesn't matter really if you need to apply more mud, just requires more time to dry but we usually try to get away with 2 coats. So if you don't see any tape showing through your mud, and the sides are feathered pretty good, then your doing great and you can leave that dry, it doesn't have to be nice just a lot of mud so we can sand it down to what we need it to be for applying our second coat.

APPLYING THE SECOND COAT :

Now we're going to be giving our drywall hole repair "California Patch" a second and last coat hopefully. If it's not good enough  we could always give it another coat, but we should be able to get away with 2 coats. So we're going to start by sanding our patch a little at first, on the first coat we applied a lot of mud, so we should be able to sand our patch without worries. All we need to do is get ride of the ridges and the big lumps or lift offs. You don't need to sand lots its just a quick rough sand so its easy for us to give our second coat. If you see any of the patch itself actually coming through the mud don't sand that area anymore, you can sand lumps around it, but if the "paper" is showing through there is no point in trying to sand that area any longer.

Again Jess is using his 6" Hammerend Putty Knives instead of his hawk and trowel because of the phone jack near. We are using Westrock green finish mud for our second coat, we've added a little sunlight hand soap to the mud, maybe about 1/4 to a big full pan like Jess has, to try to help with pin holes if you watch the other videos you'll see we always put some soap in our second coat mud. When we are coating a painted surface, you'll notice that there's these damn little pin holes that keep coming back, we got a trick to get rid of those, but first why are there pin holes ? Because the water in the mud is trying to escape, and usually it can seep into the drywall, but since its painted, the surface is sealed, which leaves the water no where to escape except through the surface, leaving pin holes …

So whats the trick, well you end up doing the coat 2 times. You apply the mud the first time like normal, then press really hard with your knife and remove all the mud from the wall like in the video. Then repeat, but this time we're going to do the same like a normal coat apply a lot of mud, make it nice and square. Then feather the edges real nice with the knife pressing hard on the one side, and finish with our last passes in the middle like we did in the first coat. Don't press to hard when you pass in the middle with your knife, you don't want to take all the mud off, you will want to leave a nice smooth coat. If you notice that a lot of pin holes are still going back, you can press really hard again and remove all the mud again and repeat, it will help removing the holes. We are pros with a lot of practice, don't get frustrated,we did it in 2 coats, but if need be, you can do it in as many coats as you want to do your drywall repair.

SANDING THE PATCH :

This is the last part of the how to drywall repair California patch. We already gave our touch up two coats, and its is now ready to be sanded. This part should be fairly easy and straight forwards it you have applied some nice looking coats. We're going to be using a dual angle sanding sponge today to sand this our California Patch, ours is a used one but and it will do the job just fine. This sponge has a rough side for grinding the edges and big lump, and a soft side for removing scratches and other little things. We have a 500 watt halogen light shinning on our wall to show us all the little defects in our patch.

Its  good to use the light if you want your patch to be perfect. Put the light right against the wall shining up from below the patch. Start with sanding the edges real good with your sponge, use the rough side, and also hit the middle of the patch a light removing the big lumps or any deep scratches. When your done rough sanding the patch with the rough side … you switch over too the soft side of the sponge. With the soft side you remove little scratches and make everything real smooth, if there's any big lump still, flip your sponge back over to the rough side. Because you'll notice that if you keep sanding with the soft side you the sponge, the lump never goes any, you need to flip the sponge and hit it a few times with the rough side, it will make a much easier and better job. You can feel with you hand to see if it feels flat , hopefully your drywall repair is real flat for you and you are now ready to go on to priming.

About Philippe

I'm 29 years old drywall taper from Edmonton, Alberta. We are proud to show you our videos, and supply all the information you will need to get er done !