Small Width Drywall Repair?

[JB]

As part of a kitchen remodling job, I removed a non-load bearing wall (wall is parallel to joists). After taking out the 2x3 top plate, I now have a gap in the ceiling drywall that measures about 4" wide x 8' long. Should I simply fill in that space with a narrow strip of drywall or cut back good drywall 16" on both sides to the next joist to make it a larger piece?? The advantage of keeping it narrow is that I will probably end up with only one seam after several coats of mud rather than 2.

--Jeff

[HotRdd]

tie some small pieces of wood to the existing drywall and then tie the 4' piece to that. Then just mud the gap, if you want this done fast start with a coat of sheetrock 30-60 or 90 and then some mud. It will make the first coat dry much faster.

[willshak]

on 10/19/2007 9:41 AM HotRdd said the following:

I've filtered gmail, so I can't respond to the OP directly. What I have done and what I would do. Cut some sheetrock about 6-8 inches wide and as long as you want. Depending upon how long the piece is, put some 1", or longer, sheetrock screws down the center, maybe a foot apart, like you were going to screw it to the ceiling, but leave the screw heads out about a half inch. Put some carpenter's or white glue along the long edges of the sheetrock. Lay the pieces up into the gap with the glue side down and with the screw heads as handles, pull the pieces down to make good contact between the piece and the upper side of the original sheet rock. If needed, hang some weights from the screws at trouble spots. When dry, glue and screw up your gap filler.

[JimR]

The answer may depend partially on what type of finish you are going to have on the ceiling.

Recently I watched a drywall expert patch holes similar to yours (but not nearly as long) by cutting the back of the wallboard to the dimensions needed to fill the gap cutting through the back and the gypsum filler, but not the face paper, then carefully tearing the face of the wallboard patch in a ragged fashion about an inch or two larger than the actual patch and carefully scraping all of the gypsum off the extended paper face. Then he put the patch into the hole, with the ragged face keeping everything at the right depth. Instead of using tape, he mudded over the thin paper face, with the result that there were no straight lines or seams and the ragged edges were invisible under the knock-down texture on the ceiling.

It was a neat solution which I copied later -- it's easy to do and gives a good result.