Patching for dummies
Having spent short periods of my life in “older homes”, the traditional plaster-and-lath wall is familiar. I’ve never built one, or tried to repair one; the closest I’ve come is putting a bit of paint or cheap wallpaper, but any time I’ve gone roaming through abandoned farm houses (don’t ask, don’t tell) I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the lasting power of the material. Good for centuries. Not so the modern replacement.
Plasterboard, sheetrock, gyprock, wallboard; call it what you will. Without the most modern of building materials, we’d be housed in a different, more expensive manner, because the skilled tradespeople that can blend horsehair and lime plaster have gone the way of the buggywhip. Oh sure, there is one somewhere, because people do beat their horses, don’t they? Anyhow, every time you stick a nail through the paper liner and the wall doesn’t fissure, be thankful to the ingenuity of some Nova Scotians.
Today I made a grand leap forward in my self-actualization. I grabbed a trowel, and some special product available at the local hardware store, and I patched my first hole in a gyprock wall. The hole was my responsibility (not my fault) as I’d done some inspecting of the plumbing upstairs, leaving a rather ragged hole going nowhere interesting. I waited for a quiet moment, like today, and with the provisions I’d purchased earlier in the week on “Bagfree Day” and a trace of good old Island ingenuity, the patching began.
My hole production (thanks to a kit of X-Acto knives) had left me with pieces that “almost completely” filled the void; no need to learn reconstructive surgery at the same time. I simply used a few strips of thin balsa (recycled from a tangerine crate) as back support, fitted the pieces back into the hole and applied a marvellous gauzy sticky tape that made things rigid enough for the next step.
I’d been warned that getting drywall grout to a proper consistency might be tricky… how do you decide if it’s thick enough when you’ve never seen the stuff other than as white dry smears, so I purchased a small plastic container of ready-mix filler. The material has the consistency of marshmallow bread spread (I won’t eat either) and spreads as easily as warm peanut butter. I had a full kit of plastic trowels, so within minutes my job was done. At least, the part BEFORE the sanding… the rest will come on the weekend.
Is that all that is involved? It was too easy. Maybe I should finish the basement before it’s time to sell and move on.
