Moving out of your apartment means one thing, you need to tackle all the little jobs you never seemed to get around to while you were living there. This includes learning how to cover up holes in apartment walls. After living in an apartment for a year or two, there's bound to be some holes in your walls, whether this is from hanging pictures or an accidental door slam. While some wear and tear is normal and should be built into your lease, fixing damages before you leave ensures you get your full security deposit back and help you stay on good terms with your landlord, which can be important if you need rental references down the line. So keep reading to learn what you need to cover up holes in apartment walls and how to make your walls look exactly like they did when you first moved in.
Patching Small Holes.
If you had a gallery wall hanging in one of your rooms, you probably noticed all of the small nail holes left in your wall when taking it down. Patching these holes is easy. All you need is a spackling paste, a putty knife, and sandpaper. First, prepare the holes by using your putty knife to clean out any excess debris. Next, load your putty knife with a generous amount of spackle and force it into the hole in the wall. Don't worry about getting spackle on your wall. Focus on filling the hole. Line up the flat edge of your putty knife with the wall, just above the filled-in area, and drag it across the hole once more. Once it's dry, use the sandpaper to lightly sand the area to leave a smooth, flat wall.
Patching Large Holes
Covering up large holes in apartment walls isn't as easy as mending holes left by nails, but it can be done. If you were to let your landlord handle it, they would deduct the cost of labor and materials from your deposit, which means you would get very little back when you leave. To patch a large hole, you will need one additional item to make sure this repair lasts, a mesh repair patch. This can be found at any local hardware store. Cut the patch so it fits over the hole and the surrounding wall. Then cover the patch with spackle, start from the sides and work to the middle of the patch, making sure that you leave no area untouched. When it dries, sand down the edges so they blend into the wall completely.
Getting Rid of the Evidence.
anchor text for external linking goes hereThe goal of filling a hole in your apartment's wall is to make it look like it was never there. Whether the hole was small or large, painting the area can help you achieve this. While the putty is drying, find a small piece of drywall in the debris and take it to your local hardware store to be paint matched. After the puttied area has dried completely, lightly sand down any rough edges with a sanding sponge. When the area seems flush and smooth with the rest of the wall, paint it. We always recommend that you paint the entire wall to make sure your color matches perfectly. Don't forget to put down plastic paint clothes to protect the carpet and tape off the areas touching other walls and the ceiling, so you don't get paint on them.