On 10/14/2008 11:50 AM RicodJour spake thus:

On Oct 14, 1:15 pm, David Nebenzahl wrote:

I've been running into a fair number of drywall patching jobs lately
that involve small patches to existing walls. While I'm actually very
good at creating good, smooth, even seamless patches, one thing I don't
know how to do is to match wall textures.

Now, I'm not a professional drwyall hanger, never have been, and don't
want to be. I'm not about to invest in a lot of equipment. But I would
like to have a few common textures in my bag of tricks, so that I could
at least come close to matching the existing texture after completing a
patch.

The textures I see vary from the canonical "skip-troweled" texture to a
sort of blobby flattened oatmeal to a kind of rough old-fashioned
plaster look (on wallboard, not lath and plaster).

Any help here would be much appreciated, preferably using standard tools
and joint compound.

For most small texturing of patched areas you're just going to be
winging it anyway. Have a selection of sponges of varying texture
(tight cells, open, natural sponge as used in faux painting) and a
selection of brushes (wallpaper paste, short bristled painting brush,
long bristled, scrubbing brush). You can apply the thinned compound
or take it off with any of the tools. It's easier to scrape a failed
attempt off of the wall before it sets up and start over. You may
need to take a couple of passes with different tools to get a good
result.

After seeing the responses here, I went ahead and did a little
experimenting on a scrap piece of wallboard. I used regular mud, dabbed
on with a stiff brush and "knocked down" with a taping knife. After just
a few minutes, I actually managed to get a decent texture that would
probably be OK for some patch jobs (I painted it after it dried to see
what it would look like finished).

Having done that, I can say that it's definitely easier to lay down a
heavy texture than a light one. Even the lightest texturing I did ended
up looking pretty "fat". I can see how having some way to evenly spatter
small spots of mud on the surface would yield a much nicer texture.


--
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

- Paulo Freire