Hi all, yes I did! Discovering my attic I accidently stepped on the drywall ceiling which caved in into my bedroom leaving a whole of about 30x40 inches in dimension. Now I have to patch it up or else the garage is cold for sleeping these days . My question is how to do it so that I have even seiling without a trace? If I hire a contractor, how much can this repair cost me? If I decide to do it myself, I imagine after cutting the wallboard and attaching it to joists, I need to patch it. What do I use to do that? And how to make the ceiling even? Is it easy? Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

It happens to the best of us. I recently made a similar mistake and ended up in my kitchen from my daughters bedroom while replacing her flooring. Any way, the largets piece of dry wall you can cut the better. Peel back the insulation in your attic so that you can determine whether or not you were lucky and damaged only one sheet of dry wall or not. Sheets are 8'x4'. Either way, keep peeling back the insulation until you get a full picture of the sheet/s that you damaged. If you want to remove and replace a full sheet, do so by locating the seam from the attic. Cut through the seam with a sharp razor knife. If you want to remove a section around your hole, Draw out a square from the ceiling side, trying to stay within one sheet parameter and cut the square out. Remember to make your cuts along the middle of a joist or a seam, so that you have some thing to screw your new all board into. Otherwise, you will have to sister joists. Replace either a full sheet or a section with the same width dry wall and attach with dry wall screws. Get a home repair book to address taping an spackling.

 

You can find helpful info and tutorials on this website at http://www.doityourself.com/wall/index.htm

You are not the first person to fall through a ceiling. Thank goodness you lived to talk about it. I once had a neighbor who had a contractor do an upstairs bathroom remodel and he fell through to the kitchen floor.

 

Sounds like ya had yourself awsh%*! They got ya on the right track on the repair as far as squaring up your damaged section and cutting back to your studs.

You will find that it's alot easier to get a nice straight cut if you just use the edge of your joist as a guide and then sister in some nailers, rather than trying to lay a straightedge up there and cutting down the center of your joist.

If you decide to sister in some blocking, use your drill with a screw bit, and some 3" to 4" screws to attach them to your joists, & make sure your get the blocking flush with the joists.

You can easily make a rip cut edge of drywall flush out with a factory recessed edge by back cutting it at a 45 degree angle along the ripped edge.

As to cost of hiring the repair done, in my neck of the woods anyway, I'd bill ya at daily rate, $150 plus materials & a cold beer while I waiting for my tape coat to dry. Always remember to tiip the guy that keeps ya from sleepin in the garage. But if ya called me I'd probably suggest you just handle it yourself, cause the material is only gonna run ya maybe $20 and of course you loose that Saturday shopping at the mall with the wife. But you know we've all got to make sacrifices