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Light Texture For Very Small Repairs Up To ½” In Diameter

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I like to use the spray can texture for most of my drywall repairs.  The cans of texture are not terribly expensive and they are very convenient, but they don’t work as well on really small repairs.  No matter how careful you are, you will always spray too much texture on a very small repair and it won't match the rest of the wall.  So here is a trick you can try for your very small texture jobs.

We will discuss a method for creating a light texture over a repair that is about ½” in diameter or smaller.  For repairs that are ½” to 3" in size use our article light texture for small repairs from ½” to 3". For tips about how to repair the damage to the drywall and get it ready for texture, you can refer to our article, Minor Drywall Repairs, and also our Ask Eli answer about how to patch nail holes in drywall.  This article assumes that you have already repaired the drywall and are ready to texture.

Things you will need:

  • Drywall mud or spackling that can be thinned with water
  • A pencil

You will need to mix a very small amount of drywall mud or spackling to the consistency of pancake batter. This works well in a small bowl with a fork (just like making pancake batter). If you look closely at the texture around the repair you will find that light texture has little bumps that are a variety of sizes. You are going to dip the pencil in the mud and put little spots of it on the repair. Start with the larger bumps which you may want to do with the eraser of the pencil, depending on the size of the bumps in the texture on your wall. You want to work from the larger bumps to the smaller bumps. For medium bumps you can use a dull point on the pencil lead. For small bumps you can use a sharp point on the pencil lead. Just dip the point in the mud, and use it to make the bumps on the wall.

If you are not sure how many big, medium, and little bumps to do, I have a trick to help you figure that out too. Take a piece of paper and cut a hole in it about the same size as the repair. Then tape the paper on the wall a few inches away from the repair and use this as a pattern. Now you can look at the texture through the hole in the paper as a pattern of what you are trying to do on your repair. If you see three larger bumps in the pattern then you should have three large bumps on your repair. You can either try to make an exact copy of your pattern or just put a similar number of bumps of similar sizes on your repair in random locations.

When you get done, stand back and look at your work. If you aren’t happy with it then you can just wipe it off carefully and start over. You may need to add a few bumps around the edges of the repair to make sure the new texture blends in with the old texture. You don’t want to have a circle showing because the new texture ends before the old texture starts. This process can get very tedious so you will only want to use it on very small repairs.

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