The one in which maybe I teach you something!

This here is our newest Home Project. If you know me in real life, you know that my husband can't be parted from his tools for long. If they sit idle for longer than a week or so, it's time to break something or build someone a basement... Our last few projects have involved other people's basements, and seeing as our house is all finished, basement included, it's time to rip something out in order to fix it.

We had this whole HUGE plan for the Laundry room. (In case you can't read the door, it says "Laundry Room, Drop your drawers here.") They mostly fell through. But that's Ok. The scaled back version will be, well, finished in under 3 weeks.

In order to start the laundry room we had to remove some of the wonderful stuff the builders of this fine home put in it. Namely wire racking. Now, this stuff is nice and was put in well. But I want some cabinets because it turns out if I own a surface, I pile crap on it. :-P So I want a door to close.

Anyway, for anyone who is interested, I thought I'd walk you through, Step by Step (ooo baby!) the process of fixing nasty large holes in your walls so that you can make them pretty without emptying your bank account on some sort of handy man (or nagging your husband for the next ever to get it done.)

For tools, you'll need some Poly Fix (or other type of drywall mud). A scraper, at least 3 inches wide. Something to sand with (a spounge or sand paper) and a knife (some sort of razor blade device.)

I had eight of these bad boys on my wall once my rack was taken down. Drywall anchors are your friend, but they leave nasty holes when you take them out!!!

Your first step is to Homer Simpson your hole. That's right. In order to make it better, you must CUT THE HOLE OUT OF YOUR WALL. You do with with your razor knife. Cut out the hole, leaving, yes, a LARGER hole. But this one you cut with a 45 degree angle, leaving a nice neat hole that can be filled with drywall compound.

Your hole should look roughly like this when you are done. By the way, this is also how you fix screws that are popping out from behind the drywall and leaving those large pimples on your wall. Take your knife, cut off the bump to expose the screw. Screw that bad boy back in, and then continue to follow these instructions.

Next, take a glop of mud onto your scraper.

You want to spread that mud over your hole. Plop a bunch on the wall then holding your scraper at a 45 degree angle to the wall, run it over the mud to scrap off the excess, and leave a nice smooth patch of mud to dry. If the hole is large, the first coat will need to be sanded a bit (I'm talking 10 seconds here) and then a second coat (and sometimes a third, don't skimp ladies, you want a smooth wall when you paint!!!) applied.

This is my sanding helper. Amazingly, it's OK to let your 2YrOld help you sand. He can't screw anything up and anything he does sand is actually helping you! Plus, he's the one that pulled the baby gate off the wall in the first place, leaving those HUGE GAPING HOLES that you have to repair, so it's only fair to put him to work.

Now, for finishing, see the next post because loading pictures in Blogger is a PITA, so I'll load more in the next post, the one in which I finish what I started.