Guide
Patch, fill and glue
Spackle, joint compound, plaster of paris and the glue that actually holds. What to use on which hole.
5 min read · First Ave Supply, 1587 First Avenue
Which filler for which hole?
Pick by the size of the hole and by how soon you need to paint over it.
| What you are fixing | Use | Ready to paint |
|---|---|---|
| Nail holes, screw holes, small dings | Lightweight spackle | 30 minutes |
| Anchor holes up to about an inch | Spackle in two passes, or patching compound | 1 to 2 hours |
| Seams, tape joints, wide shallow damage | Joint compound, the bucket or the pint tub | Overnight |
| Same day repair that must be painted today | Easy Sand 5 or Easy Sand 45 powder | 5 or 45 minutes |
| Cracked or crumbling plaster in a prewar wall | Plaster of paris, then joint compound over it | 20 minutes to set |
| A hole you can put your fist through | Wall patch screen or a repair kit, then compound | Overnight |
Spackle or joint compound
Spackle is for holes. It is thick, it does not shrink much, and it sands easily. A half pint tub fills every nail hole in an apartment and costs less than a sandwich.
Joint compound is for flat work. It spreads thin, it feathers out to nothing, and it shrinks as it dries, which is why a deep hole filled with compound comes back dished in a week. Use compound over a patch, not instead of one.
The powder that saves the job
Easy Sand is a powder you mix with water, and the number on the bag is the working time. Easy Sand 45 gives you forty five minutes, sets chemically rather than by drying, and can be coated the same afternoon. This is the product that lets you patch and paint an apartment in one day instead of two. Easy Sand 5 is for a small fix when the painter is already on the ladder.
Plaster of paris is the prewar answer. In a real plaster wall, patching with sheetrock compound gives you a soft spot that cracks again at the edges. Plaster of paris goes off hard in about twenty minutes and matches what is already in the wall.
Patching a real hole
Anything bigger than a golf ball needs something behind it. A self adhesive wall patch is aluminum screen with adhesive on the back. Stick it over the hole, skim compound across it in two thin coats in opposite directions, feather wide, sand lightly. Two thin coats always beat one thick one, which cracks as it dries.
Glue that holds in an old building
Construction adhesive is for anything structural or heavy, a loose threshold, a baseboard that will not stay, a subfloor that squeaks. A quarter inch bead and clamp or weight it overnight.
Epoxy is for things that have to take a load and cannot be clamped flat, like a broken cast handle. Super glue is for clean breaks in hard material where the two faces still meet perfectly. Yellow wood glue is stronger than the wood on a proper wood to wood joint, but it needs clamping and it needs bare wood.
And keep adhesive remover on the shelf. Getting old carpet tape or a label off the door before painting is half the prep on a turnover.
Stocking a building
Supers keep spackle, a pint of compound, painters caulk and a tube of construction adhesive in the closet year round, and buy the four and a half gallon bucket only when a real job starts, because an opened bucket skins over.
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