Dear Mr. Fix-It: How to Plaster a Hole in the Wall Home Improvement Investments

Dear Mr. Fix-It: How to Plaster a Hole in the Wall

January 25, 2011, 5:31 pm

When I was in college many moons ago, I spend a summer living with a great group of guys in a house that we rented. It was great. There was a lot of partying and fun had that summer, but we had one guy with a bad temper.

To say he was a hothead was an understatement, and during a particularly crazed, beer-fueled broken heart, he punched a hole in the wall. It was stupid. We all told him it was stupid, but that didnt fix the big hole in the wall.

Luckily, I had worked with a plasterer that summer and was able to do a decent job of repair, but I have perfected by technique over the years. Holes happen, and not always because of drunken stupidity. I knocked one hole in a wall because I was moving a couch and wasnt looking where I was going. My son made a hole by throwing a particularly heavy toy, and the Roto-Rooter man ran into the wall with his machinery. Nice.

The first step is to remove any loose plaster from the wall so you have a clean and stable work area. This will actually make the hole a little bigger, but believe me: it’s better in the end. Plaster lath is a metal screen that goes behind the hole. The plaster needs something to adhere to; otherwise it will just fall into the hole in the wall, and thats not what we in the business call forward momentum.

Mix your plaster and apply it to the hole using a trowel. Smooth it out as best you can, but know that it wont be perfect. It will be bumpy and wavy, but as long as the hole is covered, that is all that matters.

Let the plaster dry overnight, and in the morning, smooth and even out the dried plaster by sanding it down either with an electric sander or by hand. I prefer electric, but I will also say that I set off the smoke alarm in dorms twice within five minutes because of dust created from the sanding. Yeah, it was a proud moment. Also, make sure you are wearing a breathing mask, because you dont want to breathe in all that plaster dust.

You should know have a wall that looks absolutely normal, except for the mismatched area of color where the hole was. The last step is just to paint the wall so it all looks nice and even. Congratulations! You just plastered your first hole. Way to go, Mr. Fix-It.

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