Paint Chips/Drywall Gouges

These tips are about how to repair paint chips around the house. Regular wear and tear creates chips, nicks, and bruises on the walls when they are bumped into and damaged. These tips will help prolong the life of your interior paint, and extend the life of the paint so that you do not have to completely repaint the interior of the home as frequently. Here you will find some tips on repairing paint chips around your home.

How Deep is the Chip

You need to assess the depth of the chip before you just paint over it. Deep gouges will be almost as visible whether it has matching paint in it or not. There are a number of products on the market that you can use to fill gouges in drywall or texture on your walls and ceilings. If your gouge is under ¼ deep use a light weight spackle, roll the product into the grove making sure the spackle is proud of the existing drywall. Once the spackle is dry sand the affected area with a sanding block, about 150 grit. Once the patch is flat you can texture with one of those texture in a cans. Use the latex one it will make your life a lot easier with your mate if you do, the other one has a lot of nasty solvents in it and can make the house very unpleasant. Make sure you shake it well before you apply. Use even strokes and make several lite passes instead of one heavy pass. There are also simple patches that are available if there is a large hole in the wall (more than 1 inch in diameter) that can be applied, mudded over, sanded then painted. Generally, you will want to use either spackle or joint compound to fill these blemishes. Joint compound dry’s slower and shrinks back when dry but it is cheaper and works better with larger patches. Sand them down to the level of the rest of the wall, then paint them.

Matching Color

Paint keeps for years, so when you do paint, buy an extra gallon when you are purchasing your paint and save it for touch ups. Most homeowners will keep spare paint, so even if you purchased your home with the existing color on the walls, look around for extra paint. Another way of being able to reproduce your paint is by copying down the color code that is put on the side of paint can. When you go and get the new paint mixed make sure you get the same sheen, and manufacture. Different codes for different manufactures, they don’t always cross reference the different colors. You can use this paint to touch up chips and dings in the paint around the home. If you do not have access to matching paint, pull a paint chip off the wall about the size of a silver dollar and take it to your local paint store or home improvement store. They will, usually, be able to match the paint color almost exactly, or at least close enough that any difference is not noticeable. One of the advantages of taking in a sample is that the color of your walls will change with time, the sun fades the wall and small hands tend to darken them.

Old Paint

While paint does keep for a long period of time, you may have to do a little work on the paint to make it usable again. First, you will want to thoroughly stir the paint. A mixer used with your drill or even a cheap hand mixer can make short work of thoroughly stirring the paint and remixing any parts that have separated. If you have lumps in the paint, pour it through a cheese cloth to strain out lumps.

Use Good Brushes

Bristle brushes frequently leave brush strokes where ever you use them, and this may be a telltale sign that there has been a touch up job done. Use a good PVA primer on any drywall patches that you have made. The bare drywall takes paint at a different rate than the unpainted area. PVA primer allows the finish paint to be absorbed at the same rate. A small paint roller or a sponge brush will leave a texture that will more easily blend in with any surrounding texture, more effectively hiding any flaws. After the main part of the patch has been painted use the roller, without adding any more paint to it, to dry roll out around the patch. This will blend the colors into the existing wall paint and further hiding your patch.

Good luck on your patching, and remember to call us if you don’t like the results or choose to let a professional do the work.