Drywall screw damage - any way to reuse the same spot?

[dpb]

DK wrote: ...

"molly" bolts...

those are the ones that expand behind the sheetrock and can put them in existing holes.

--

[DK]

Moved into house that has many problems with loose screws in the drywall. Clueless previous owners were using regular screw directly onto drywall. Toilet paper and towel holders are all barely hanging there. In some places the holes are now bigger than drywall inserts.

Any way to repair and use the same spot or do I have to patch existing holes and screw all things in the different places? (This is to avoid painting because it's very nice but no paint left and I had poor experience with color matching).

Thanks,

DK

[Colbyt]

Not sure what you mean by "drywall inserts". If you mean plastic plugs-- Don't!

Towel bars, tissue and so on should be hung using a 1/8" toggle bolt. The butterfly portion of which require about a 3/8" hole to enter the wall. They are sold in different lengths. I only stock 3" ones on the truck which seems to work in about 95% of the installations.

Colbyt

[Doug Miller]

That depends entirely on what kind of drywall inserts the holes are bigger than. If you're talking about inserts like these

then yes, you can easily re-use the same spot, probably with no repairs needed at all -- just get some of these instead:

You can buy these at any home center or hardware store. It wouldn't surprise me to find them in the hardware department at Wal-Mart, either. If the holes are already bigger than these, check out these:

The self-tapping screw anchors (...fastening_4) are a little questionable for towel holders. I think you're better off with either the toggle bolt or expandable anchor for that application.

[metspitzer]

These work great.

Make sure the screws are not too long. It causes problems if you try to sink the screw too far.

[Joe]

Get over it, Most color matching now is amazingly good, so you don't have any excise to do a hack job on that basis. You will find that almost all color matched repairs will be very hard to spot after a few days. The key to a good match has always been a decent sample, clean and reasonable size. HTH

Joe

[DanG]

You can make a decorative board that is a bit longer than your towel bar. Round the corners or cut at 45, run an interesting router bit around the thing. Paint it a close or contrasting color, install to the studs, install towel bar to it.

The ITW EZ anchors are great: