LESLIE: Jacquelyn from Texas is up next, who listens to The Money Pit on KFNC. And you’ve got a texturing question. What can we do for you?
JACQUELYN: I actually had some sheetrock work done in my living room, and some texture work. And he didn’t exactly match the texture. And I wanted to know if there’s any way that I can go … I mean, you know … I mean what can I actually do to at least kind of camouflage it somewhat so it don’t be so obvious?
TOM: Well, there’s a bunch of ways to add texture to walls. Jacquelyn, what did you have before that you’re trying to match? Was it a fairly low profile texture? Was it like a sandy finish? Was it a swirly finish? What did it look like?
JACQUELYN: It’s like a crow’s foot finish that’s up there.
TOM: Hmm. Leslie, how do you like to texture walls?
LESLIE: Well, it depends. I usually try to do texture through painting rather than actually applying something on because paint is at least something that’s reversible. Whereas if you go with something that’s dimensional, you’re kind of stuck with it for, you know, the long haul; rather than just paint – you could cover over it.
So what he did doesn’t match exactly? Does it seem …?
JACQUELYN: No, it doesn’t. It’s very obvious where the work has been done. And I was hoping to kind of camouflage that …
TOM: Did he make an attempt at trying to match it?
JACQUELYN: No, he didn’t.
TOM: OK. Well, listen. The only thing you can really do at this point is to choose the smallest of the two areas and take them down and try to do one pattern all the way across the whole thing. Now, if he did this dimensionally – so perhaps he used drywall spackle, which I’ve seen done – one of the ways that that’s often done is with a wallpaper brush. I know I have a ceiling in my house that has spackle on it, where we took a wallpaper brush and made swirls in it …
JACQUELYN: Oh, OK.
TOM: … and so it kind of created a pattern and it looks pretty cool. But then again, I was pretty sure that’s what I wanted and, as Leslie said, if you do do that and you change your mind, you know, it’s kind of difficult to take that back down because you’re going to end up sanding an awful lot of that dust away and making a big … a big mess. But …
JACQUELYN: Right.
LESLIE: Is it in a section of the room where that wall can sort of stand on its own? Or is it really on a long expanse of wall?
JACQUELYN: It’s on a long expanse of wall.
LESLIE: So it’s not on a section that sort of sticks out a little bit or is recessed at all?
JACQUELYN: No, ma’am.
TOM: Yeah, Jackie, the only thing you can do here is make it look like it was always supposed to be that way by, like Leslie said, making it an accent or secondly, decide what’s the smallest, easiest area is to modify, scrape it down and start again.
Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT. 888-666-3974.
Jackie has a lot of work to be done there, Leslie.
LESLIE: It could be a huge project.
TOM: Sometimes it’s easy but sometimes it’s not. You trying to decide which way to go? Call us right now. 888-666-3974.
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