Knowing 'How To Patch Drywall' will save you a lot of money. The skills that you need are not that hard to learn. That combined with the 'Step by Step' instructions that we provide on this website will make you  a 'Drywall Patching Pro' in no time.

Not sure if this is your problem? See the articles 'Troubleshooting Drywall Problems' and 'How To Spackle a Wall' for a listing of all the common drywall issues.

Of course you are probably wondering about whether you have a big drywall or sheetrock problem, compared to a relatively easy patching problem.

The next section provides a brief description of the various levels of difficulty you may be faced with. We start with the easiest problems and move on to more difficult ones.

Troubleshooting Drywall Patches

Before you learn how to patch drywall, you should understand what the various types of problems that you may encounter are like. Below, we describe the various drywall patches. These are described by the level of difficulty with the first being the easiest to deal with:

Dents, Dings and Small Holes

Okay, you want to paint the living room and when you take everything off the walls you find a lot of inmperfections. Places that had pictures or other items hung up, now have holes left in the wall. In addtion, you notice a lot of small dents in the wall. What do you do?

This is a common problem and is not that hard to solve. A small amont of wall preparation and a little bit of spackling compound will take care of this. For complete instructions, see the article 'How To Spackle a Wall'. We give you instuctions on what type of material to use and how to apply it.

Fixing and filling small holes will not take a lot of time,especially if you do it the right way. Follow the links in this section for comprehensive instructions.

Cracks In Drywall Walls and Ceilings

Everything seems perfect, the paint looks good, the wall is smooth, but wait! There is a hairline or maybe not so hairline crack. What caused this? Is someone to blame for this? What do I do?

There are lots of reasons for cracks in your walls and ceilings. Ranging from poor drywall installation to natural settling to a poorly constructed house. For some insight on the reasons for your cracks, take a look at this article that discusse 'reasons for cracks in drywall walls and ceilings'.

Is your house older? No builder to call and complain to? Well you will be faced with hiring someone or fixing it yourself. The first thing to determine is the 'size' or 'severity' of the crack.

Hairline or Small Cracks - Hairline cracks may appear and stay the same size for some time. If they don't change after a period of time you can repair them. Hairline cracks are covered in the article 'Fixing Minor Drywall Cracks'. This is the easiest crack repair and will not take a lot of time.

Then there are the cracks that look like a fissure caused by a severe earthquake. This type of crack will take a bit more work. The problem is that joint compound alone will not solve the problem. You are going to need some tape and multiple coats of compound to deal with it.

Still not the end of the world, just takes a little longer. For this problem, you need to see the article 'Fixing Big Drywall Cracks'. Yeah, these are macho cracks and need a serious 'Home Fixer' to take care of them.

Fixing Holes In Drywall

Again we are in an area that is by degree. How 'big', 'Big', 'Big', 'Big', 'Big' is the hole? Well, you get the idea.

We talked about small holes, such as those left by a nail that hung a picture in the 'Spackling' section. Now we are talking about holes that are bigger, maybe you can put your finger through it or worse, maybe your cat can crawl through it.

To keep it simple we have narrowed it down to three sizes of holes. (1) Small holes that can just be filled with spackling. These are generally 1/4" or less in diameter. The 'spackling' segment above covered this. (2) The next step up is holes that are from 1/4" to 1 1/2". Why this distinction? Well, this hole can be dealt with using drywall tape and compound, replacing drywall is not required. (3) Large holes from 1 1/2" and up. These holes will require a drywall patch. Not insurmountable, just a bit more work.

Patching Textured Walls and Ceilings

Your patching project may be complicated by textured surfaces. These can occur both on walls and ceilings. When you have this issue you both have to patch the drywall and the textured surface.

I wish I could tell you that this was an easy problem to fix. However, it is not. First of all you need to understand that there are lots of styles of texture. To make it worse, each style will vary, depending on who installed it. Whoah! Wait a minute, am I saying that textures will vary depending on, not only the type, but also the installer? Are there no standards? No, not really.

Patching and fixing drywall texture will require a bit of expermintation.