How do you fill a hole in the ceiling?

Ok, so an odd choice for a blog post, but it happened to a friend of ours recently after he had a light fitting changed and when the electrician left there was a great pesky hole just next to the light, stood out like a rocket over Dublin (a phrase a pal of ours uses LOL) and would stand out just as much if repaired badly.

He asked a great and highly experienced decorator (whom we’d known for several years) to repair it and to our surprise, the first thing he did was to trim the plasterboard around the edges of the hole so there was none of the damage standing proud from the ceiling level, but then to our even greater surprise, he mixed a little filler and spread it on a piece of newspaper (yes newspaper, as in the Daily Telegraph) and crumpled the piece of paper up into a rough ball, pushing it into the hole! He made sure the little ball of paper settled below the ceiling level.

After this rather surprising process of filling the hole, (which now looked worse) he announced he fancied a cup of tea whilst the filler on the paper set!

Stage 3 came after the little ball of newspaper, now soaked in filler, set hard. He trimmed it off again and mixing another small amount of (stiff) filler, pushing it into the hole, over the newspaper “bung” and things began to take shape. He left it now and came back the next day on the way to another job, sanded it down roughly and put another layer of slightly wetter and smoother filler over, but importantly he used a wide filling knife that moved smoothly over the ceiling either side of the hole and kept this new and slightly wetter filler to the right level.

Stage 4 was to come back when the last level of filler was dry and using a fine sandpaper on a sanding block. He sanded the repair carefully so as not to damage or mark the surrounding ceiling, then with the damage slowly disappearing he put a light coat of white emulsion (the same as the original) and after another cup of tea and a second coat and hey presto! You really couldn’t see where the hole was!

avatar Name: Alexandra Eager
About: Formerly Finance and Operations Director of anmarketing agency. Now luckily semi-retired. Amateur interior design buff, constantly experimenting on my own home (much to the chargrins of hubby) and passionate about anything to do with home interiors and improvements. Wish my house was bigger!

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Posts by Alexandra Eager (49)