Drywall Repair & Installation in Santa Monica, Bel-Air, & Cheviot Hills

Yes, and it is the part of the job we spend the most time on. Most homes around here have orange peel, knockdown or a hand troweled skip trowel, and every one of those varies by who sprayed it and how heavy they were that day. We test the match on a scrap piece of board first, hold it against your wall and adjust the mud thickness and spray pressure until it reads the same. A smooth wall is actually the hardest match of all because there is nowhere for a flaw to hide, which is why smooth repairs get a wider skim coat.

Because the crack was filled instead of repaired. Squeezing spackle into a crack gives you a rigid plug in a joint that is still moving, and the next season of expansion opens it right back up. A proper repair means widening the crack into a V, embedding paper tape or mesh across it in setting compound, then feathering two more coats out wide. If the crack runs diagonally off a door or window corner, that is framing movement, and sometimes the real fix involves addressing what is moving, not just the drywall.

A single small patch is usually a two visit job. Day one is cut, hang, tape and the first coat. Day two, after the mud has dried overnight, is the second and third coats, sanding, texture and paint. Larger repairs or a full room of new board run three to five days because each coat of compound needs real drying time. Anyone promising to cut, mud, texture and paint a repair in a couple hours is skipping coats, and you will see the result the first time afternoon light hits that wall.

Usually not. If the board is still firm and just discolored, we can seal the stain with a shellac based primer and repaint, because a water stain will bleed straight through regular paint no matter how many coats you put on. If the drywall is soft, sagging or the paper is separating, that section has to come out. Either way the leak has to be fixed and the cavity fully dry before we close it up, and we will tell you honestly which situation you are in rather than covering a wet problem.

Less than you are picturing, because we plan for it. Plastic containment with zipper doors goes up around the work area, floors get papered, vents in the room get covered so dust does not travel through the HVAC, and we sand with vacuum attached sanders instead of open pole sanding wherever we can. We also vacuum and wipe down at the end of each day rather than letting it build up. You will still want to keep the door closed, but the rest of the house stays livable.

Both. We hang and finish new board for garage conversions, room additions, closets, ceilings after a remodel and walls that came out during a renovation. That includes the right board for the room, moisture resistant in bathrooms and laundry areas, and fire rated where code calls for it on a garage to house wall. We finish to a level four for textured walls and a level five when the walls are staying smooth or taking a high sheen paint, since that finish shows everything.

We recommend painting corner to corner, and here is why. Even a perfect color match will show as a slightly different sheen where the new paint meets old paint that has aged, been washed and taken years of light. That difference gets more obvious over the following months, not less. Painting the full wall or the full room costs a little more up front but it is the only way the repair truly disappears. On a large wall with a small patch we can sometimes get away with spot painting, and we will tell you when that is realistic.