Are you guys ready to get your DIY on?  I hope so, ’cause Meredith from Welcome to Heardmont is here today to fill us in on one of the handy skills she’s learned by remodeling her own home.

You’ve been following along with all of her renovations, right?  If not, then you’ve got to check out Meredith’s master bathroom to sneak a peek at her most recent project – I think you’ll be impressed!

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Hello It’s Great to Be Home readers! I’m Meredith Heard from Welcome to Heardmont and I’m so happy Liz asked me to be here today. My husband Stephen and I have been remodeling our 1980s rancher, lovingly nicknamed Heardmont, since 2008. We’ve done 99% of the renovations ourselves and three years later, we’ve learned a little about a lot of things, from installing can lights to remodeling bathrooms and beyond.

One room that required a lot of attention when we moved in was our VERY 1980s kitchen. To give you an idea of where we started, here’s how our kitchen looked the day we bought our house.

And here’s how it looks today.

Some of the first projects we tackled in this room were scraping the popcorn ceiling and replacing the fluorescent light with four beautiful can lights. Can you blame us? That ceiling was pretty awful!

Being the novice DIYers that we were, we didn’t realize they made light switch boxes especially for remodeling. So, when we installed our new lighting, we bought a “new construction” box and proceeded to cut a giant hole in our wall in order to hammer the box into the stud.

This is what I’m talking about. Nasty.

We got an outrageous quote from a handyman to patch this hole and decided we’d figure out how to do it ourselves. Here’s how we did it!

Tutorial: How to Patch Drywall

Supplies:
1. Piece of drywall
2. Drywall saw
3. Utility knife with drywall blade
4. Scrap piece of wood or two
5. 3″ drywall screws
6. Glue (We used Elmer’s craft glue)
7. Spackel to blend the patch with your wall
8. Primer and paint to match your wall

Step 1: Using a drywall saw (like the one pictured below, found here) cut the edges of the hole you want to patch so that it is nice and square.

Step 2: If your hole exposes a stud, you can attach your drywall patch directly to that stud. If not, you’ll have to attach a scrap piece of wood to a neighboring stud as a brace.

Since we were working around a switch box on the other side of the wall and having to leave space for a new one, our brace (bottom left) isn’t ideal. If we were strictly patching the hole, we could have put 2 cross braces in between the studs and everything would have been hunky-dory.

Step 3: Cut a new piece of drywall so that it is several inches bigger than your hole on all four sides. For this you will need a utility knife with a blade made especially for your drywall like this one (found here).

Here’s a good method to cut drywall. With your knife, score the drywall along the four sides of your square. Then “snap” it by folding it along those score lines. Flip it over and score the other side of the drywall along your creases. This will create nice clean edges on your patch that is now cut down to size.

Step 4: Score the BACK side of your drywall patch (the part that will be inside the wall) to the size of your hole.

Step 5: Snap the drywall along these four score lines and PEEL the drywall away from the paper backing on the other side. You can see I’ve done this on two sides already in the photo below.

Here is what your patch should look like now.

Step 6: Test out your patch to see if it fits in the hole. If not, shave away at the sides until it fits!

Since we knew we’d be installing a light switch box in this section of the drywall, we went ahead and cut the hole for the box in the patch.

Step 7: Put the patch in the hole. You’ll notice the paper we left along the edges overlaps the “good” drywall on the wall behind it. With your utility knife, score through the paper layer on the edges of your patch AND through the paper on the drywall behind the patch.

This is the very important SECRET step! It is how your patch will blend into your wall without looking lumpy around the edges!

Step 8: Remove the patch and peel away the paper layer you just cut through on your wall.

This is how the edges of your hole should look after peeling away the paper (and paint and bits of whatever else were on your wall!).

Step 9: Test your patch and make any adjustments. Then drill pilot holes through your patch into the brace (or stud) you will attach it to. Once you have your pilot holes, attach the patch to the brace using drywall screws.

Look at how pretty that fit is! See how the paper from the patch fits within the area we peeled from the original drywall?

Step 10: Glue the paper along the edges of the patch to the drywall beneath it. We used Elmer’s glue because that’s what we had. Then spackel over the edges of your patch to hide any seams or screws.

Step 11: After your spackel dries, sand it down for a nice smooth finish.

Step 12: Prime and paint!

Step 13: Enjoy your newly patched drywall and dare your guests to spot the patch!!

I hope you found this tutorial useful and that I made it sound easy enough for you to try it yourself. We actually saved ourselves over $150 doing this patchwork ourselves, and I don’t think a pro could have done a better job!

A huge thanks to Liz for welcoming me to It’s Great to Be Home today. If you want to see the other projects we’ve done in our kitchen click here, or go here to see a full tour of our home at Welcome to Heardmont. Thanks again Liz!

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Meredith, what a fab tutorial!  Thanks so much for playing with us today.  :)  Are you guys ready to tackle drywall now?