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How to patch a small hole in a Sheetrock wall

A Primer on Drywall Repair

Most home owners have discovered, much to their despair, that they have inherited a new hole in an otherwise nicely painted "sheetrock" wall.
Small or big, holes are unattractive and need fixing.

It really does not matter whether someone poked the hole in the drywall with a pencil, you did it yourself down in the den breaking in that new golf club, or your son missed the net in the hallway a few times with a hockey puck. Doors banging against a wall with no doorstop tend to make a perfectly round hole in drywall about the size of a doorknob. Imagine what your visitors will think of that. It might have been a little hole that got picked away at until it turned into a big one. Children love playing with chalk.

You have the itch to fix it, but the handyman wants $40.00 an hour. The pressure is on.

No matter. Relax. You can patch it small, big, or bigger no matter what size it is.

In the good old days, interior walls were built with boards, lath, and plaster. If you had a hole you just plastered it with some handy lime plaster. Today the materials have changed, and the repair process has been modernized -but it still includes plastering in the hole, and smoothing the repair to as close to invisibility as possible.

The repair compound of today, also called jointing compound or spackling compound, drywall repair or taping compound, is actually very similar in nature to plaster. The smooth paste hardens when it dries, and it looks like plaster or chalk.

Most modern housing is built with interior walls that are constructed of 2x4 wooden studs covered with Sheetrock. Also called gypsum board, or drywall, the modern chalkboard is made of gypsum, which is semi-hydrous calcium sulphate, a hard, chalky white mineral substance.

The mineral is ground, calcined, mixed with various fibres, water and aerating agents, and as a thick paste is flattened into a nice layer between two sheets of heavy, strong paper and dried. It becomes a moderately strong, common, and easily used building material.

Most drywall is usually 1/2" thick but can be as much as 3/4" thick. Different types of drywall including waterproof versions are offered for bathrooms and other specialized purposes.
In Canada it is also called 'Gyprock' -but no matter where you live, when you discover an annoying hole in the seemingly brittle, flimsy stuff, you can be assured that you may be tempted to call sheetrock by several other names.

No matter.

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