LESLIE: Ivan in Missouri is on the line with a wall-texture issue. What happened to your money pit?
IVAN: Well, we had a skylight that had water leaked on it. And I finally got some roofers up on the house and was going to install new skylights. And they didn’t get the skylights done. They were roofing, so they had to come back and put the skylights in. But in the meantime, I got rain, I got water in the house and water damage.
So, I got the windows in and the sheetrock work done, except for the texture. And I could match the texture on the ceiling; that’s a popcorn I can do out of an aerosol can. But I’ve got a texture on the wall. I have no clue how they prepared this and put it on. It’s almost like maybe they used a sponge but it doesn’t really look like a sponge. It’s no definite pattern to it.
TOM: So, Leslie, what are some of the techniques for texturing walls, such as like he’s describing?
LESLIE: There’s a lot. If it looks like it’s a sponge – does it have flat textures to it or is it spiky?
MIKE: I was going to say I’m looking at here and it’s all rough. There’s no place that’s really smooth on it. And some of it is heavy texture, some of it is light texture. Almost maybe they used a plastic bag. I don’t know what to splot (ph) it on. I haven’t figured out how to match it.
TOM: That actually is a technique where you blot the paint with a bag.
MIKE: OK. Well, that may have been what they’re done.
LESLIE: It’s just the paint or is it the actual finish on the wall?
MIKE: They’ll have sanded some of that where I did the patch and stuff. And I think they textured it with – probably had a little bit of a dye in it and stuff. But I can match the color with the paint. That’s not a problem. I’m just trying to figure out how to match the texture to kind of hide my repairs.
LESLIE: Well, I mean if you think it does look like a plastic bag, you can put some of the spackle or the joint compound onto the wall, where you have your repair, and sort of feather it out. And then, like Tom said, you can take a plastic bag and sort of sponge it, like scrunch it up in your hands and sort of blot with it. And that’ll give you the areas of smoothness and then the areas of depth and height, as well.
There’s some other textures that you can do. Like one’s called a “knockdown” where you almost give it a spackle and then you wipe it through with a trowel but not too heavily. And a smooth-edged one.
MIKE: Yeah. Like kind of an orange peel, I think, they call that one.
LESLIE: Yeah. So it’s like that one’s called “orange peel” and that kind of sounds a little bit like it to me. This is one of those times where you need to put a picture on our website so we can help you out better and see it directly.
MIKE: Yeah. I wish I had the means to do that for you but I don’t today. And I’ve called a handyman in the area that was recommended to me and we just haven’t been able to link up yet.. So he may be able to give me some ideas when I get him out here.
LESLIE: Yeah. I would try the plastic-bag technique. You could also try sort of stippling it with a paintbrush, like a heavy stipple brush to give it some areas and then you can smooth out certain areas with a mat knife or a putty knife just to see how that might do for you. There’s a lot of different ways. You know, you can do it with brushes, you can do it with combs if you have something linear, wallpaper trowels, all kinds of things.
MIKE: My biggest question is – I’ve got a bucket of joint compound but I think that it’s probably too thick. I probably just need to go get some plaster and mix it thin to do the texture with.
LESLIE: The plaster is going to do the trick. Or if you do the joint compound, you just have to use lighter layers. If you use the plaster, you have to make sure you get the mix right, because you want it to adhere and you want to make sure that it’s not too thin or too thick. So it’s going to be a little bit of experimenting to see how you feel comfortable.
MIKE: Yeah. I’ll do some experimenting on a piece of sheetrock or something that I’ve got for scrap until I figure out something, I guess, and go from there. It sounds like you gave me some good ideas so we’ll …
TOM: Yeah, well, that’s kind of the best way to attack this sort of thing – is to just experiment a little bit until you get something that’s sort of close to what you have there and then sort of blend it in. But it feels like you’re on the right track now.
MIKE: Alright. I appreciate the information.
TOM: Good luck with that project. Thanks so much for calling us at 888-MONEY-PIT.
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