Drywall repair cost in Georgia: what moves it

What a small patch usually costs around Rome

A small hole, up to about the size of a fist, usually runs $280 to $400+ around here, and an awkward one goes past the top.

That figure isn't a quote, and it can't see your wall. What it can do is tell you whether a quote you've received sits in a sane neighborhood. One well inside the range is probably a plain hole. One far outside it deserves a question about what the person saw that you can't.

Nail holes and dents on their own are too small to be worth a trip, since our minimum job charge is $180. They're best saved for a visit that's happening anyway, and why a list of small jobs costs less per job has the arithmetic.

Why a small hole doesn't price like a small job

The filling is the quick part. The rest of a patch is a sequence with waiting built into it: a coat, a pause while it dries, a wider coat over the first, sanding with a light held flat to the wall, texture if the wall has any, then primer so the paint doesn't flash.

Skip any of those and the patch shows, sometimes the same day and sometimes after the first season of the house moving. The hands-on work is short. It's the drying between coats that stretches it out.

The price follows how many of those steps your hole needs, and whether anything about it takes it past a small patch.

What pushes a repair past the small-hole range

Past a small hole the job changes, and so does what drives the price:

• A cut-in piece. Past about a fist, the opening gets squared off, backing goes behind it, and a new piece of board is screwed in, taped and finished. That's carpentry first and finishing second.
• A full sheet. Sheets are four feet wide, so a replaced one leaves a seam along each edge, and every seam has to be taped and feathered wide enough to disappear.
• A ceiling. Overhead work is slower and messier than the same repair on a wall, and a patch on a textured ceiling is among the hardest to hide.
• Texture. A smooth patch on a textured wall shows from across the room. Light sprayed textures can be matched closely, and heavy hand-applied patterns take longer and match less exactly.
• Several repairs. Five patches in one room share one setup. Five patches in five rooms don't.
• A cause nobody has fixed. A crack that returns every year is movement, and a stain is water. Either one changes what the visit is for.

Does a stain or a crack change the price?

Yes, because the patch becomes the smallest part of the job. A stain means water got in, and closing it up before the source is found only hides the evidence, so what a ceiling water stain is telling you comes first. A crack is a question about why, and which wall cracks matter sorts the harmless ones from the rest.

Older houses around Rome often have plaster over lath behind the paint. That's a different material, repaired differently, so a drywall quote doesn't carry over to it.

The part where doing it yourself really saves money

Nail holes, dents and a fist-sized hole are all fair homeowner work if you'll wait out the drying between coats, and how to patch a hole in drywall has the method.

Hiring pays back on the bigger jobs: a cut-in piece, a ceiling, a texture to match, a stain nobody has traced. If the whole wall needs paint afterward, what interior painting costs covers that side.

For the bigger ones, we take on drywall repair, and quotes are free. A wide shot of the wall and a close one with your hand beside the hole is usually enough to start from.

Three questions to ask before you accept a quote

Where does it stop? Compound, texture, primer and paint are four separate steps, and two quotes for the same hole often differ on nothing but how far along that list they go. Ask for the stopping point in words.

Is the hole as big as it looks? A fist-sized hole in the middle of a wall is one job. The same hole beside a window, across a stud or overhead is another. A good answer names what they saw that moves it.

What would change the price? Hidden damage behind the board is the usual answer. A quote should say what would change it, and that you'll hear about it before the extra work starts and not after.

Questions that come with this one