repairing-drywall-cracks

Painting and Decorating Concourse

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Speedy drywall repair skills are vital to a paint contractor. Most interior paint jobs will require at least some drywall repair.

I use quick setting drywall compound to speed up the repair process, and even speed up the quick set compound with a hair dryer. You can literally do small hole repairs in a few minutes using quick set and a hair dryer - applying three or

Drywall Repair Methods

Repairing cracks

four coats of drywall compound. Speed, while important to a painting contractor, is not a high priority to a DIY'er. Doing the repairs correctly is equally important to both painting contractor and homeowner. If you don't do the repair right you are simply wasting your time. So let's look at the different types of drywall repair and I will describe my methods for handling each.

Cracks

Stress cracks are caused by movement in the framing to which the drywall is attached. Some are caused by "settling" of a new house, wood drying out and adjusting to the stress of it's new role in the structure of the new house. There are also stress cracks caused by poor framing and engineering of the house. The first mentioned type of crack can ussually be repaired once for all. The second type of stress cracking in hard to permanently repair without going behind the wall and dealing with the framing of the house. The second type will likely return every year or two or longer, regardless of how thorough a job you do on the repair.

Stress cracks are repaired with drywall tape either mesh or paper tape. The only exception to this rule would be hair line cracks in a inside corner where the drywall tape has not been disturbed or blistered. Such cracks may be speedily repaired with painter's caulk.

Using Drywall Tape

There are three types of drywall tapes that I use: self adhesive fiberglass mesh tape, self adhesive perforated paper tape and conventional non adhesive paper tape.

Diyer's will find the self adhesive tapes more user friendly I think, and I use them for the convenience of not having to embed the tape in drywall compound. I think it is faster and it ensures that you won't get any dry spots behind the tape which will result in blistering of the tape.

To repair a crack on a flat surface with self adhesive tape, you will simply press the tape onto the drywall over the crack for the length of the crack. Press it down with your hand and follow that up with a flat side of a spackle knife.

Next apply a smooth coat of quick dry (or overnight dry if you prefer), compound. Quick dry compounds come in dry powder and are mixed with water which activates the compound causing a chemical reaction to occur which causes the compound to set up. The setting up and drying of these compounds can be further accelerated by 1) using a hair dryer or 2) adding a accelerator to the mix. I will use Easy Sand 5 min set compound for quick repair of a hole. As a general purpose compound I find that Easy Sand 45 is about the right set up time when doing repairs in one room prior to painting. An advantage of using the quick setting compound is that you don't have to take it off the truck every night during the winter months as you do with conventional compound to prevent freezing.

Cracks will require three coats of drywall compound to finish them off. Each coat extends out a little wider than the previous coat, allowing for a gradual taper so that the tape is not a "hump" that abruptly starts and stops in the middle of the wall. I use quick set on the first two coats and conventional compound for the final coat.

For inside corners where the old tape needs to be removed and retaped, I use paper tape - either self adhesive or non adhesive. Paper tape is smoother than mesh tape. The mesh tape causes a bumpy job in corners because the edge of the drywall knife will bounce up and down off the mesh in corners.

To apply self adhesive paper tape in a inside corner. First remove the blistered or damaged tape by cutting it out with a razor knife, then fold the tape in the middle first without removing the protective backing. Cut the tape to length, then remove the paper backing. Push the folded tape into the corner, then press it into place.

Mudding an inside corners

I find it faster to use a special inside corner knife for this. I apply the first two coats of compound with a corner knife and the last I use a flat knife doing one side, allowing it to set up and then doing the other side with the flat knife. I often use only the quick set mud on inside corners.

Non adhesive paper tape

Conventional tape is applied into a bed coat of wet drywall compound. Apply a a coat of mud over the crack about three inches wide. Next you lay the paper tape directly over the wet mud and push it in with a 6" drywall knife causing the tape to fully contact the mud and forcing the mud out a bit from under the tape. You can pre wet the tape to get it to cling to the mud underneath better. If there are any dry spots where the tape doesn't make good contact with the wet mud underneath, these areas will form blisters which will have to be addressed later.

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