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How to Repair Drywall Ceiling Water Damage – Install the Repair Panel

Bob Jackson
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by Bob Jackson

How to Repair Drywall Ceiling Water Damage – measure, cut and install the drywall repair panel then finish the drywall ceiling. This repair is continued from How to Repair Drywall Ceiling Water Damage – Part 2.

Measure and Cut the Drywall Repair Panel

I purchased a 2ft x 2ft x 1/2in drywall panel for about $4 and marked a 6in by 6.5in square section to fit the hole I cut in the basement ceiling. Make the repair panel about 1/8 to 3/16 inch smaller (length and width) than the ceiling hole so the panel doesn’t bind. If you have a scrap piece of drywall laying about, that will also do fine. The curve in the edge of the panel in this photo is a fish-eye artifact from the camera lens.

2ft x 2ft Drywall Repair Panel
2ft x 2ft Drywall Repair Panel

Install the Ceiling Drywall Repair Panel

Here’s the drywall repair panel compared to the water damaged drywall section cut from the ceiling. I used a sawzall blade to the cut the repair panel because it has finer saw teeth for a cleaner cut.

Drywall Ceiling Repair: Repair Panel Compared to the Water Damaged Section
Drywall Ceiling Repair: Repair Panel Compared to the Water Damaged Section

The drywall repair panel is trimmed to fit with the utility knife and fastened with four drywall screws to the plywood backer board and the suspended ceiling metal runners:

Drywall Ceiling Repair Panel Fastened with Screws
Drywall Ceiling Repair Panel Fastened with Screws

Tape and Mud the Drywall Repair Panel

Self-adhesive fiberglass drywall joint tape is applied to the four joints of the repair panel. A thin coat of joint compound applied with a 4″ or 6″ blade. You can see the weave of the fiberglass tape if you look closely:

Drywall Ceiling Repair: Fiberglass Tape and Drywall Joint Compound
Drywall Ceiling Repair: Fiberglass Tape and Drywall Joint Compound

I forgot to take a photo of the fiberglass joint tape before I applied joint compound to the ceiling. This next photo illustrates the process from a job I was doing on the wall:

Drywall Finishing: Drywall Joint Compound over Fiberglass Tape
Drywall Finishing: Drywall Joint Compound over Fiberglass Tape

Apply Finish Coats of Joint Compound

Immediately after the fiberglass tape joints are mudded (“mud” is slang for drywall joint compound), spread a thin coat of drywall compound using the 12-inch blade and feathering the edges. Don’t delay because those feather thin layers of mud start to dry in minutes and will gum up the blade leaving gouges in the finish.

Tip: With drywall compound, “less is more“. The less you put on the less sanding you’ll have to do later.

Water Damage Drywall Ceiling Repair: Finishing with a 12 inch Drywall Blade
Water Damage Drywall Ceiling Repair: Finishing with a 12 inch Drywall Blade

The next photo is the ceiling patch after the first application of drywall compound with the 12 inch blade. I let this dry overnight before sanding:

Water Damaged Drywall Ceiling: Finishing the Repair Panel
Water Damaged Drywall Ceiling: Finishing the Repair Panel

Drywall Finishing – Wet Sanding

The next day, I used a wet sanding sponge to smooth the high spots and feather the repair into the main ceiling. A drywall sanding sponge is a sponge made with an abrasive surface. Dip the sponge in a bucket of water, squeeze out the excess water so it’s damp but not dripping then sand with almost no dust. Rinse the sponge in water as needed to remove the joint compound that will clog up the sponge:

Drywall Repair Finishing: Wet Sanding
Drywall Repair Finishing: Wet Sanding

After sanding I applied a very thin second coat of joint compound with the 12 inch blade, let dry and wet sanded. Here’s the ceiling patch ready to be painted. The nearly white-on-white doesn’t contrast well for the camera:

Ceiling Drywall Repair: Patch Ready for Painting
Ceiling Drywall Repair: Patch Ready for Painting

If you look closely (click on the photo for a larger view) you can see the brighter edges of the where I painted the ceiling patch. I took a small sample of the ceiling to the local paint store for a computer color match, but as the salesman explained, the computer isn’t perfect and whites are especially hard to make an exact color match.

Finished Ceiling Drywall Repair after Painting
Finished Ceiling Drywall Repair after Painting

Hope this project saves you some money!

Take care,

Bob Jackson

basement ceiling drywall repairdrywall repair panelhow to finish drywall jointshow to fix hole in drywall ceilinghow to install a drywall patch panel
Bob Jackson
Bob Jackson
Technology product manager by day and a prolific handyman in the evenings and over the weekends. Bob was the founder of the original Handyman How To website and that tradition continues on this site with excellent new handyman content into the future.
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