Roll up your sleeves, this fix requires some elbow grease
If you accidentally cause some damage above your head and you're wondering how to patch your ceiling drywall, you aren’t alone. Broomsticks, toys, boxes, and other objects can easily punch a hole through your ceiling. Other times, a crack can appear from seemingly nowhere.
The cost for drywall repair might not be as much as you think, especially if you can do the work yourself. Read on and learn how to fix both small and large damages to your drywall ceiling.
Part of the prep, before you repair the damage, is to properly assess it. A ceiling isn’t a wall, and there can be light fixtures, hooks, support beams, and other load-bearing parts of the ceiling to consider. A crack or small hole might not seem like a big deal until you notice it spreading toward your chandelier.
Properly assessing the damage is crucial. It can save you both time and money, and depending where the damage is located, what caused it, and how large it is, one of the best things about drywall is you can just put up an entirely new panel. However, for this guide, we will assume it’s a fix that doesn’t require a new panel.
Not much about working with drywall is clean. It’s brittle and prone to creating an extreme amount of dust. Since you’ll cut into cracks, saw drywall, and sand your ceiling, you need to place a plastic drop cloth on a large section of the floor under your work area. Tape it down along its edge so it won’t move and spread dust.
Damaged drywall rarely, if ever, is damaged in a straightforward way. There may be chunks of drywall hanging on, rough edges, etc. Important: put on your safety goggles and mask at this point as you’ll be working under the drywall and don’t want it to get into your eyes or lungs.
Using your utility knife, cut along the inside edge of damage, making sure any edges are straight and clean. This saves a lot of time later.
Sometimes you can’t clean up the damage, or the damage is too large to repair. This can happen if a hole is bigger than a baseball or a crack is wider than drywall tape. If you find this is the case, you’ll need to remove the entire damaged section. Work carefully or you might be scouring online search results for the cost of a total ceiling repair.
Using your utility knife or drywall saw and a T-square, cut a rectangular or square piece out of your drywall. You will replace this later. If the damage is large enough to require you to perform this step, skip to Step 9 once you complete this step.
For minor damage, like a small hole or crack, you can repair it fairly easily. For a small crack, it’s best to use drywall tape. It’s usually a transparent grid and around four inches wide. Tape it along the entire crack–add a little extra on the ends for support. For small holes, it may be easier to use a drywall repair kit.
Spread the joint compound in a medium layer over the drywall tape or repair kit. Don’t use spackle, there is a difference between joint compound and spackle. You don’t want to use too little or it won’t cover the damaged area, but using too much will considerably extend the time you spend sanding.
Spread it with the putty scraper, extending just a bit beyond the drywall tape (about one inch). Don’t worry about being messy, as you’ll add another layer after sanding. Make sure this is completely dry before proceeding to the next step.
Use a fine-grit sandpaper to sand the first layer down until you can just make out the drywall tape or repair kit. You want to be able to see it but not necessarily sand until it’s showing. Ideally, this looks like a super thin layer of joint compound remaining on top of the repair.
At this point, you shouldn’t be able to see the damage any longer. It should look like a bad patch of paint on your wall. After you have completed Steps 5 and 6 one time each, repeat them, but spread a thinner layer of joint compound.
You have already applied the “structural” layer of compound, so the secondary layer is used to smooth out the surface and prepare it for paint. When you sand, remember to sand lightly—you don’t want to overdo it and undo your hard work.
Once you have a smooth surface, you’re ready to paint. If the drywall surrounding the damage is old, you may need to repaint the entire ceiling to match the new paint. You can always paint the damaged area and if you notice, after it dries, that it looks newer than the original ceiling, you can paint the rest. If the drywall is new, you may need to add a primer before you paint. Once you’re done, remove the plastic drop sheet, clean up any mess, and enjoy your spotless ceiling.
Note: If you fixed the damage with tape or a drywall repair kit and have completed the above steps, congratulations–you’re finished! Steps 9 and 10 only apply if you have damage severe enough that it requires you to cut out and replace a section of drywall.
Measure the hole in your ceiling. Using your drywall saw, cut a piece of drywall that’s just a tiny bit smaller than your hole–about one-fourth of an inch. Don’t worry about the gap, this will be solved later.
Attach your new drywall piece to the ceiling. Ideally, there should be drill holes where the previous piece was hung. If there aren’t, use a stud finder to locate support beams and screw the drywall into that. Use at least six screws to keep the new drywall piece in place, as it has no supporting drywall around it to keep it up.
Once the drywall is screwed into place and is properly supported, you can continue the process from here by proceeding to Step 4–applying drywall tape over the gaps between your new piece of drywall and your ceiling. Follow each additional Step until the damage has been painted over. At this point, you have completed the repair.
If you’re comfortable with the time commitment and potential mess, you can do this job yourself and save some money. Most handy DIYers can patch a small hole or fix a small crack as neither requires special expertise, and you’ll only have to pay for materials and tools (if you don’t have them).
However, if your repair requires you to cut and replace a piece of drywall yourself, the complication of the task increases and the job might not be for you. A drywall repair expert can certainly help, and you should expect to pay between $50 and $100 per hour in labor.
The two most common types of drywall are ½-inch and ⅝-inch thick white or gray drywall. Most walls are ⅝-inch thick because the drywall is slightly more resistant to damage and it helps dampen sound considerably. It’s also much heavier, which is why most ceilings are ½-inch thick. There are special use cases where you want to use ⅝-inch thick drywall for ceilings, such as between a garage and living space, and the ceiling above a finished basement.
It is more difficult to drywall a ceiling than it is to drywall a wall, but not so hard that DIYers can’t tackle it. One of the main issues with hanging drywall on your ceiling is getting it into place. Drywall isn’t light so, if you are hanging full drywall panels, you will need at least two (it’s better with more) people to hold the panel while you drill it into the ceiling as a single piece can weigh between 40 and 60 pounds and will need to be held in place for up to 10 minutes.
There shouldn’t be any gaps between your walls and ceiling. These can be fixed with joint compound but that is only a fix, and it’s much better if your drywall fits correctly in the first place. Sometimes gaps can appear if your foundation shifts significantly but if this is the case, you have a much bigger problem than patching drywall.
