Drywall Hole Repair and Patching in Phoenix

Small holes: nails, anchors and screws

Holes from picture hangers, wall anchors, curtain rod brackets and old TV mounts get filled with compound, sanded and touched up. Anchor holes are bigger than they look because the anchor has to come out, and pulling it takes a bit of the paper face with it. Those get a dab of compound over mesh tape so the patch doesn't sink. On a textured wall the spot gets a dab of texture too, so it doesn't read as a smooth dot.

Medium holes: doorknobs, fists and furniture

A hole a few inches across, the doorknob-through-the-wall size, needs something solid behind it. We cut the hole to a clean square, slip a backing strip inside the wall and screw it to the drywall, then screw a new piece of drywall to the backing. The seams get taped and finished in thin coats, each wider than the last, sanded smooth when dry. Thin coats are what make a patch flat. One thick coat shrinks, cracks, and leaves a bump that shows once the wall is painted.

A doorstop goes on at the same time, or the hole comes back.

Big holes and access cuts

Anything bigger gets cut back to the nearest studs on both sides, so the new drywall has framing to screw into. Plumbers and electricians leave these cuts behind after a repair in the wall, and we close them up the same way: new drywall, taped, finished, textured and primed. If the cut is in a ceiling, the patch gets screwed to the joists and the joint gets a little extra attention, because gravity works against a ceiling patch.

Corners and bullnose

Many Phoenix homes built since the 1990s have rounded bullnose corners. When a corner gets dented or chipped, the metal or plastic bead underneath is bent, and no amount of compound hides a bent bead. The damaged section of bead gets cut out and replaced, then finished. Square corners get the same treatment with square bead.

Patches that still show

A patch that shows after painting usually failed in one of three ways: the compound was built up instead of feathered out, the texture wasn't matched, or the patch was painted without primer, so it soaked up paint differently than the wall around it. We fix other people's patches too. Usually that means sanding the hump down, re-feathering, re-texturing and priming.

Problems we fix on this page

• Doorknob hole in the wall
• Hole from furniture or moving
• Hole from an old TV mount
• Anchor holes from shelves
• Holes from pictures and nails
• Hole a plumber or electrician cut
• Hole in the ceiling
• Dent in the wall
• Kicked-in hole
• Hole behind the door (no doorstop)

How it starts

Send a photo of the hole, and one of the wall from a few feet back so the texture shows. A tape measure in the photo helps. We send back a fixed price, you say go, and Levi shows up to do it. Small holes are usually done in one visit. Bigger patches sometimes need a second short visit for texture and primer once the compound has dried.