Which Drywall Holes Can I Fix Myself, and Which Need a Handyman?

Look for drywall work you can check. The Handyman Company has repaired Florida drywall since 1999, holds Florida contractor licenses CRC1336072 and CBC1258366, and backs every patch with a one year warranty. As of September 2026, Google shows 4.3 stars across 919 Google reviews from all six offices.

If your first try still shows, that is no trouble at all. Our handymen cut it back to sound board, set a proper patch, blend the texture, and prime it, and nobody will say a word about the first try. The Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Clearwater, Sarasota, and Melbourne offices all do drywall repair every week.

Keep people and furniture out from under it, and get the leak stopped first. In Florida the cause is usually overhead: an AC drain line that clogged, or a roof leak in heavy rain. A plumber or a roofer fixes the source. While you wait, here is what to do first about a wet ceiling.

A sagging section has taken on water, so it comes out. That is not a patch-kit job. Once the source is fixed and the area is dry, our handymen cut out the soft board, pull any wet insulation, and check the opening with a moisture meter. New board goes up and gets textured to match the ceiling. That rebuild is our water damage drywall and ceiling repair.

It depends on how it feels once the leak is fixed. Press the spot gently with your palm. Firm, dry board with a stain can usually be sealed with a stain-blocking primer and painted. Soft, swollen, bubbled, or crumbling board took the water inside it, and that piece has to come out.

We do not stop leaks, dry out homes, or treat mold. Mold work is its own licensed trade in Florida, and it comes before us. After that, our handymen cut the wet strip out in a straight line, check the framing dry, and rebuild the wall, baseboards and all. We never close up a wet wall.

Because the house is moving a little, and rigid mud cannot move with it. In newer homes, a straight crack at a ceiling seam that opens in winter and closes in summer is often a roof truss lifting with the humidity. In block homes, cracks over doors and windows often come from the house settling.

Filling that kind of crack with more joint compound just schedules the same crack again. A corner crack gets flexible paintable caulk, and a seam where the tape has let go gets new tape and a finish that can move. A crack wider than an eighth of an inch, one that keeps growing, or one that runs at an angle from the corner of a door deserves a look before anyone fills it.

Usually it is the texture or the primer. Most Florida homes wear knockdown or orange peel texture, and a smooth patch in the middle of either one shows up like a bald spot when light rakes across the wall. Fresh joint compound also drinks paint differently than the wall around it, so a patch that skipped primer flashes as a dull spot.

Our handymen blend the texture past the edges of the repair, so there is no hard line where new meets old, then prime the whole patch before paint. If an old wall color has faded, we will tell you honestly when painting the whole wall will look better than a spot. Knockdown matched by hand is a big part of drywall repair in Tampa and drywall repair in Sarasota.

Not if you want it to last. A drywall patch on plaster over wood lath usually shows within a year, because the two materials move differently. Homes built before about 1950 tend to have plaster: Seminole Heights, Hyde Park, Tampa Heights, and Ybor City in Tampa, and Riverside, Avondale, Springfield, and San Marco in Jacksonville.

Plaster cracks along the lath lines and sounds hollow where it has let go of the wood. Our handymen re-attach loose plaster with plaster washers, bridge the cracks with mesh, and skim coat the wall so it reads as one surface again. Our Jacksonville handymen do the same for plaster walls in Riverside and Avondale.

Because the mud has to dry between coats, and Florida air is slow to let it. A good patch takes several thin coats of joint compound, each one dried fully before the next. One thick coat shrinks and cracks, so on a humid day the handyman may come back for the second and third coats instead of rushing them.

The rest of the visit runs in the same order every time. Floors and furniture get covered, the damage is cut back to sound board, and the patch is sanded, textured, and primed. We paint to match or leave it ready for your painter, and you walk the work with us before we leave. The whole list gets one written price, approved before anything is cut.