Initial Progress

We've already done a bit of work, and I wanted to show you the before and after shots. We don't have pictures of everything just yet, but we'll have it as soon as we can. So far, we've got these and they took a ton of work in their own right.

This was the hole in the family room. I hadn't ever dealt with a hole bigger than a finishing nail before, so fixing this bad boy was a bit of a challenge. Here's my process, and how it worked. (click picture to zoom in)

First, I wanted to square up the edges of the hole. I did this because it was right next to an electrical box and it was too big for one of the standard wall patches. Those two factors meant I had to put a piece of new drywall in there to fill the hole. Squaring up the edges make it much easier to cut a patch to put in there. Once you get a patch that fits the area perfectly (test fit to make sure there aren't any gaps), you'll need to build some support so you can get it to stay put. If you're having trouble getting the patch to fit, use a rasp on the edge. It'll take off just a smidgen of material so it's ideal for the last bits of fitting. The supports should probably be 1x2 pine boards. Don't get anything super fancy, just get some cheap stuff. You'll want to cut two of them (depending on the size of the hole) with about 4" of extra length (2" overlap on each side). Now, just set them in the hole with the 2" overlaps pulled tight against the drywall and sink a drywall screw into it. Pre-drilling is probably a good idea here. Once you have these in place, fit your patch piece into the hole and then sink some screws through the patch and into the supports. This will make the patch nice and strong so it won't pop out if you accidentally bump it. Now, just spackle the edges is the fit is really tight, or for a better finish, use some paper drywall tape to cover the seams. Now you can spackle over the screw holes and the tape (to hold it down) and then texture and paint. Voila!

Here's the other major fix we've made:

We uninstalled and reinstalled all the floors in the living room and the family room. It's still not perfect by a long way, but it's so much better than it was. You can see that we changed the direction of the boards, tried to vary them a little and didn't line up the seams. I think it looks like a real floor now, and it really changed the feel of the house from "Some crappy Do-It-Yourself-er lives here" to "We're too cheap to buy decent flooring, but we're not necessarily bad people." And that's an improvement.