Drywall patching is one of the most common projects on the do-it-yourselfer’s list. Whether it’s the result of some intentional remodeling work, such as creating a hole in the wall to fish some electrical wires, or from something accidental, like a doorknob hole in a wall, sooner or later you’re going to have an unsightly hole in your drywall that you need to take care of.

And while it’s a common project, it’s still one that intimidates a lot of people. But there’s no need to be scared off. The materials are cheap and readily available, and the techniques are easy to master with a little practice and a little patience.

Get the area ready for the patch

The first thing you’ll need to do is prepare the damaged area to receive the new patch. Lay a tarp or some plastic sheathing on the floor under the patch area, to catch all the debris. Wear eye protection and a dust mask while cutting the drywall, and for the subsequent sanding operations.

If the hole is small — less than about 6 inches across, such as that from a doorknob — begin by drawing a square around the hole that’s large enough to extend completely past the damaged area. Use a small level to draw straight lines that are plumb and level. Next, probe through the hole to be sure there are no wires, plumbing or other obstructions that could be damaged by the cutting.

Cut out the damaged drywall along your lines. You can use a drywall saw, which is a type of handsaw with a narrow, tapered blade and large teeth made specifically for this use. Another option is to use an oscillating multi-tool equipped with a drywall blade.

Larger holes should be cut back to the adjacent studs, so that you’ll have adequate support for the drywall patch. Start by using a level to draw two horizontal lines on the wall, one above and one below the damaged area. Using your drywall saw or oscillating tool, cut along both of the lines until you encounter the edges of the studs.

From the stud edge, measure over three-fourths of an inch, which will bring you to the stud’s center. Using your level, draw a vertical line at the marks. Now use the oscillating tool — or a utility knife with a sharp blade — and cut down the vertical lines, as well as along the remaining parts of the horizontal lines. The end result will be a clean hole that’s centered over two adjacent studs.

Install the new drywall

Your new patch will need some support to hold it in place. If you cut all the way back to the centers of the studs, then the support is already in place. So the next step is to cut a new piece of drywall to the correct size. New drywall is available in full 4-foot-by-8-foot sheets, or you can buy smaller sizes that are intended specifically for patching.

Put the new patch in place, and secure it to the studs with drywall screws. Drive the screws in so that the head is recessed just into face paper, and just below the drywall’s surface; don’t drive them too deep. You’ll also want to resecure the existing drywall to the studs adjacent to the new patch.

If your new patch area is between the studs, then you’ll want to install some support blocking. Cut a piece of 3/4-inch lumber or plywood so that it’s about 2 inches longer than the width of the patch and narrower than the height of the patch. Drill a 1 1/2-inch hole in the middle of the wood.

Slip the wood strip into the hole, then center it in the cutout. Put your finger in the hole in the wood, and pull the wood tight up against the back side of the existing drywall. Secure the wood in place by screwing through the existing drywall. Finally, cut a new drywall patch to fit, and screw it in place against the wood.

Finish the patch

Using drywall tape and joint compound, apply a strip of tape to each of the four sides of the patch. Use a drywall taping knife to press the tape in place, making sure that it’s well adhered with no air bubbles behind it. Let the tape dry completely.

Finish the patch with at least two additional coats of drywall compound. With each coat, spread the compound out over a successively larger area, feathering and blending the patch into the surrounding drywall. You want to avoid creating a big lump over the patched area.

Allow the compound to dry between each coat, and sand each coat smooth prior to applying the next coat. Again, sand the edges of the patched area carefully so that the compound feathers out onto the surrounding wall.

When you’re satisfied with how smooth the patch is and how well it’s blended in with the adjacent wall, wipe it off with a damp cloth to remove any sanding dust. Let it dry, then apply a drywall primer to the patched area. This will seal it so that it absorbs paint more evenly.

Finally, apply texture to match. In the case of a texture that was machine-applied originally, such as a “splatter” type of texture, you can purchase patching texture in cans. The can comes with a couple of different sizes of plastic straws that attach to the nozzle, which lets you spray different sizes and weights of texture. Experiment on a scrap drywall or cardboard before actually spraying it on the wall.

In the case of a hand-applied texture, a little more experimentation and artistry is involved. Practice dabbing or rolling on small quantities of joint compound until you achieve the same appearance as what’s on the rest of the wall.

Everything you need, from drywall and joint compound to cutting and taping tools, is readily available at home centers, hardware stores or lumberyards.

Remodeling and repair questions? E-mail Paul at paulbianchina@inman.com. All product reviews are based on the author’s actual testing of free review samples provided by the manufacturers.

   

This guest post is by John Burnside of moneyin15minutes.co.uk.

When people arrive at your blog, they’ve all come from somewhere on the World Wide Web. They could have found you on a search engine, they could have known about your site already, or they could have come from any one of a million other places.

But all of these different types of visitors have a certain frame of mind when they visit your site. Almost always, they will have a different reason for coming to your site. In this post, I’m going to explore those reasons from a psychological perspective so that we can understand the actions people generally tend to perform when they come to your site from a certain traffic source.

Search engine traffic

When people find a site through the search engines, they’re generally looking for answers to a specific question, or information on a certain topic.

Consider the very nature of search engines: you type in what you want, and hopefully the answer comes up. This means that visitors who come from the search engines are likely to be visitors who want to stay and read your content to find the answers they were looking for. If they don’t find those answers in your content, they may find the answer in one of your ads. In general, this means that you’ll tend to get higher ad clickthrough rates from search engine visitors.

A study performed by iProspect showed that in recent years, people have begun to trust the results from search engines, and this can have a knock-on effect for your site. If you are at the top of the search results for a particular search term, that can increase the awareness around your brand.

This study also showed that if you are the number one for a particular keyword then a small majority of people will perceive you as an authority in your niche. This can affect the way that people react when they come to your site. If you are perceived as having a good brand before new visitors come to your site, then you already have a small element of trust from them—and that might encourage them to do things like sign up to your emailing list or your feed.

Direct traffic

Direct traffic is traffic that comes from people typing your website address directly into their address bar. This is a good form of traffic because if people already know your website address, that means that your site was memorable enough for users to recall it.

Because this type of traffic consists almost entirely of past visitors, you know these people are coming to your website to see what your latest content is. That means that the probability of this kind of traffic clicking on your ads is low, because they may have ad blindness (a topic I mentioned in one of my other guest posts about click through rates).

What they are likely to do, if they haven’t already, is to get more involved in your blog by joining your various social networking groups and subscribing to your blog feed. Also, users coming to your site as direct traffic are the most likely to leave comments on your posts, because they want to try and shape their favorite blog a little with their own personalities.

Social media traffic

The psychology around the whole social media revolution always seems to fall back on the desire of the user to be noticed and have their own personal space online. There are some very interesting points made in this article which discusses what people are looking for when they are searching on social media sites.

The gist of it is that people who use social media either want to be sociable with friends or to be entertained. This usually leads to high bounce rates for those types of visitors, because once they’ve seen your blog, they’ve got their quick entertainment and are ready to move on. This is a particular issue on sites like stumbleupon, where users are encouraged to quickly flit from one site to the next.

The thing that social media traffic is good for, however, is getting your content to go viral. Because of these users’ tendency to quickly browse from one site to the next, if someone does find something that they really like, they’ll share it. As soon as you get people talking about your content, product, image, and so on, they will spread it for you, because it’s entertaining or particularly useful.

Referral traffic

There are some similarities between referral traffic and social media traffic but I have made the distinction because I believe there is a difference in being told about something by a friend or being told about something by a web developer.

When you’re told about something by a friend, you’re generally going to check it out, because you want to see what information or fun it can give you, rather than because you trust the friend’s advice. If a web developer that you trust tells you about it, you are going to look at it in almost the same way, except that this time the advice is coming from a trusted professional. It is a little bit like being told about an illness by a doctor and a friend who has read about the illness in a book. You trust both, but somehow you will edge towards the doctor’s opinion.

That analogy doesn’t work for all kinds of referral traffic, however. When you click through a link in a blog roll, for example, you trust that the blog owner has chosen a good partner site, and you are going on the anchor text keywords provided.

Traffic that comes to your site in this way is much more likely to have a higher bounce rate, and lower interactivity with your site, because these users don’t have much information to go on before they visit. If, on the other hand, they’re being referred by a link in the content or a link from a guest author, then they’re much more likely to stay because they have heard from a trusted source (the referring blog owner) that site has something useful on it, or they are interested in more of what the guest author has to say.

For these last two types of referral traffic—guest posts and in-text links—the most likely things these visitors will do is read a bit of your content to see if that helps them. If it does, they may be encouraged to interact with your site by signing up to your Twitter account, RSS feed, and so on. The key with referral traffic is that you have to either catch the visitor’s interest, or answer a question that they have, before they will add you to their social network.

Paid advertising

I won’t say much about this form of traffic because it is very similar to search engine traffic from a psychological perspective—but it does have one key difference.

People who click on these links don’t mind clicking on ads. There are some people who refuse on principle to click on any ads; others who don’t want to will do so on the odd occasion. But a visitor who comes to you through an ad is likely to click on ads on your site. There is the problem, however, that if they have already clicked on one link and not found the answer to their question, they will click away. This is why most people who use paid advertising do it with one-page sites that contain instant and direct calls to action.

Which traffic methods are for you?

Each of these different traffic generation methods has its uses and, depending on what direction you would like your blog to take, you should target each appropriately.

If you’re after new visitors, and you’d like more advertising clicks, then target search engine traffic. But if you would like to have more email sign ups and blog interaction, then I would suggest seeking referral traffic through, for example, guest posting. This way is the best to ensure that you get traffic that is already interested in both blogs in general and, more specifically, your topic.

For a more specific type of blog, like a photo or video blog, social media traffic is probably your best bet because visual content can attract a lot of attention from the difficult-to-please social media audience, who are, after all, often looking for distractions.

Have you found any particular trends to come out of your traffic from different sources? Can you think of any other sources of traffic that have different behaviours from these?

This post was written by John Burnside, an expert in the making money and Internet marketing niche. To read more of his content or find out about ways to make money online, please follow him on Twitter @moneyin15.