repairing things

we have about five 4"x2" holes in the ceiling that i really feel like i should be able to manage myself with these https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073HQS59F/.

then there's big 1 ft by 6ft hole with a power outlet in the middle that i'm saving for last.

One of my favorite "repairing" stories from before we renovated our house was I was changing our sheets on our bed and made a big show of snapping the flat sheet to spread it out on the bed and hooked it on the ceiling fan above our bed (our ceilings upstairs are 7 feet or so) and it yanked the ceiling fan off the ceiling joist and onto our bed in a shower of 75 yo drywall leaving a hole up to our unheated and largely uninsulated attic.

I repaired the drywall rather quickly that week to keep the heat from escaping. Spackling is like herding cats.

for patching largish troublesome holes I'd screw a bit of random timber in there like the old style latts you'd get in those disgusting old black lime walls for something for it to cling to. Lol they used to horse hair and that's often how electrical fires used to start. Also ignore me I don't have a clue what I'm talking about.

black lime is most disgusting thing present in old walls next to asbestos. At least the latter is doesn't make you feel absolutely poisoned and itchy while it is fixing to kill you.

my problem is 80% i am terrible at the fundamentals of applying stuff to create a smooth surface and 20% walls are different in the united states and if i call my dad his advice makes no sense because it's stuff he learned renovating a terraced house in sheffield ca. 1985.

i've lived here for 8 years and am still unclear what a stud is tbqh.

caek I used those mesh things you linked to before and they really only work if they have something to hold on to. 6x6 obv bigger than 4x2, so it will work if you are just trying to get by for a little, but if you want it to last, you will need something to fill in the gap.

You could get a piece of drywall cut to just about the right size, screw it into the adjoining drywall on an angle, then use the mesh.

Another option would be to enlarge the holes so they reach the nearest joists. That would make a larger but easier job.

studs run vertically in walls, joists run horizontally in ceilings/floors.

if you can get a rough base of some bonding in there, then wack in a lot of polyfila as flat as possible and sand it down afterwards, it will look reet with a lick of paint!

sorry I'm not being helpful here, PBKR is talking sense

lol pbkr that fan story is terrifying and amazing

screwing plasterboard in is the correct approach with stud walls, or gluing it in if you cant get a fixing to some wood. Or even the cowboy option of stuffing the plasterboard in with screwed up paper!

Is drywall the same as plasterboard or not or is it not even a simple yes/no but the dreaded "it depends"

Ive a bit of drilling new holes and hanging a few shelves and repairing of holes meself to look forward too, i was hoping to get away with skimming tbh

a stud sensor will be your friend then because you don't want to be making exploratory holes to find them!

Is drywall the same as plasterboard or not or is it not even a simple yes/no but the dreaded "it depends"

very close to the same but plasterboard is specifically designed to be plastered over whereas drywall just gets joint compound plastered over the joints

https://www.hunker.com/12616166/differences-between-gypsum-board-and-plasterboard

xp those mesh things can be tricky on walls and might fall off a ceiling unless supported as PBKR suggests

last time I had to do a drywall repair I watched a bunch of YouTube videos ... many were not relevant to my tiny job, but I gained some reassuring general knowledge and was able to do a California patch that looks pretty good (it would look even better if we painted it to match the wall color)

xp the entire party wall is fuckin wrapped in some kind of foil, alas

Wonderful for insulation no doubt but the fuckin studfinder is useless as a result for anything along that part

Im just hoping that the yungfella who gave me the screws and the go ahead to start drilling into what he presumed was brick beyond the boatd knew what he was talking about, or else....

lol just use those spiral plasterboard fixings and don't actually put anything on your shelf ffs!

lol pbkr that fan story is terrifying and amazing

― Tracer Hand, Monday, November 8, 2021 7:22 PM (twelve minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've got loads of house horror stories.

i put little cable clamps down on my speaker wire in my new place, for the left speaker, running up and across a doorway, then back down to the other side and the receiver. felt pretty good because my friend let me borrow these little clamp pieces where you have to nail them in, and even my tiny skeleton fingers were big enough to get in the way of the hammer, so much. i was basically 80% hammering the nail and 20% hammering my thumb, on purpose, because that was the only way.

just throwing this in here because it was a Small Victory but also probably <.0001% of normal handy person skill for normal day-to-day things.

just don't try putting a drywall anchor in where there's a stud ;_; xp

for patching largish troublesome holes I'd screw a bit of random timber in there like the old style latts you'd get in those disgusting old black lime walls for something for it to cling to.

This is the way we patched drywall holes. Stretch of scrap wood or two screwed across the hole, piece of drywall cut to fit, tape bed & texture. The mesh screens are harder to make invisible IMO.

I have hit ceiling fans with sheets on more than one occasion, it is a miracle I've never ripped one out of the ceiling.

just don't try putting a drywall anchor in where there's a stud ;_; xp

― certified juice therapist (harbl), Tuesday, 9 November 2021 00:47 (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Great another fuckin thing to worry about!

but the bonus is there that you've fucked up a plasterboard fixing but also found a solid fixing point!

hah hah unless by some bad luck you just happened to find a bit of the joist in a wiring zone and there is a steel plate on it or not!

oh god lol it's true

those plates have burned me more than once

Bad enough I couldn't sleep before this thread yiz animals

sorry I forgot to put "wiring zone" in scare quotes!

I have successsfully used a magnet to locate studs: rub it gently over the plasterboard and it should detect the nails or screws in the studs; once you've found two or three you get an idea of where the studs are.

never thought of that before, it would have to be a very strong magnet I guess? but looking online you can get super strong neodymium magnets for pocket change.

I've had shit luck with those drywall mesh patches, they always left an obvious mound no matter how smooth I got the surface. I've had much better luck actually making the hole big enough to screw a brace in from behind then putting a cut piece of drywall in the opening.

I'm posting this example video because of my crush on Tom Silva:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLGmTzEGSIY

My current house is from 1938 and has several additions over the years (I can see five totally separate wood floor in my upstairs hallway) and the outer walls are made of concrete block so some walls are modern drywall, some are 83 year old plaster and lathe, some are cinder block, some have regular 16" stud spacing, some do not, etc.

The wall I decided to mount guitar hangers turns out to be drywall added over the top of existing plaster and lathe. The studs have 3 inches of wall material over them and couldn't be found without drilling a number of exploratory holes and having to use 5 1/2" screws to mount everything.

I have successsfully used a magnet to locate studs: rub it gently over the plasterboard and it should detect the nails or screws in the studs; once you've found two or three you get an idea of where the studs are.

I have never had any luck with stud finders. Seems like the whole damn wall has a stud behind it. Or none.

But that makes sense. Hell, it's probably how a stud finder works in the first place and not by, I dunno, sonar like I've always thought.

it puts out like a wave or something to measure density, not magnetic

I guess my walls aren't the only things that are dense then.

not a wave i guess. that would be more like sonar. it's based on whether things conduct electricity?

But there you go, it's looking for the metal, not so much the wood.

I've never had much luck with them either, they only seem to work really well if you've got newer construction with metal studs. Allegedly, the best bet with wood studs is to find a stud located along the seam of a drywall panel joint, where there will be more nails to hold the drywall edge in place and thus more chances for the magnet to pick something up.

Our current house is from the 1920's and has thick as fuck plaster walls that render a stud finder pretty much useless.

xpost - some are magnetic, but yes others measure density (the latter are the ones that I never have luck with)

NB I've never tried any of the newer, extra wide ones that are supposedly much better.

The only time I’ve had difficulty with studfinders is when the walls are plaster with those skinny boards behind it. Lath boards?

Yeah, lath.

But there you go, it's looking for the metal, not so much the wood.

― pplains, Tuesday, November 9, 2021 9:58 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

no because other things conduct electricity too. even you. are YOU metal?

i don't really know how it works but i'm going to imagine it's like my fancy scale that says i am 3% bones. like a stud finder for your body.

But wood doesn't conduct electricity! And that's what studs are usually made of!

that's what she said

*points studfinder to chest* it's beeping hahahahaha

I'm just glad it wasn't me that finally broke the stud barrier on this thread.