Drywall repair and patching in Lititz, PA
Patching a hole in drywall in Lititz runs the $70 hourly rate plus the $30 service charge — most take 1–3 hours, so $100–$240 before materials.
Holes, cracks, popped nails and water-damaged patches cut back, filled flat, textured to match and left ready for paint.
What it costs
$70 per hour — most of this work takes 1–3 hours.
$30 service charge. Covers the trip and the first look. Applies once per visit, including the preset jobs.
Materials are extra, at cost, with the receipt. The full rate sheet has the rest of the fine print.
What's included
- The damage cut back to sound board, with backing or a patch piece set and screwed where there's framing
- Tape and two or three coats of compound, feathered wide enough to disappear under a side light
- Sanding with the dust contained, and the floor and the furniture covered
- Texture matched where there's texture: orange peel, knockdown or a troweled finish
What's not
- Paint. The patch is left flat, sanded and ready for primer unless painting is quoted with it
- Whatever wet the ceiling. A leak gets fixed before the drywall does, and that's a plumber or a roofer
- Whole rooms and ceilings. I do those too, but as a project with a written estimate, not a patch by the hour
What to have ready
- The wall clear, and something over the floor if the floor is precious
- A photo sent ahead. The size of the hole moves the price more than anything else
- Your paint and its sheen, if the patch is getting painted
Where I do this work
Lititz, PA and anywhere within about an hour of it — Lancaster County and the towns around it.
Lititz, Manheim, Ephrata, Lancaster, Elizabethtown, Mount Joy, Denver, Akron.
Questions people ask
- Will the patch show?
- Not when it's feathered wide and the texture matches. Light raking down a wall is what finds a patch that was mudded in a hurry, which is why each coat has to dry before the next one goes on.
- Does it take more than one visit?
- Often. Compound dries overnight, so anything bigger than a doorknob hole usually means a short second visit for the last coat, the sanding and the texture. I tell you which at the quote rather than after.
- Do you paint it?
- Not by default. Matching an aged wall color means painting corner to corner, and most people would rather do that themselves or have it quoted as its own job.
- There's a brown stain on my ceiling. Can you just cover it?
- That's water, and it bleeds back through fresh paint unless the leak is fixed and the spot is sealed with a stain-blocking primer. Fix the leak first and the patch itself is straightforward.
How the job goes
A good patch is mostly prep: the broken edge cut back to solid board, because compound over crumbling paper cracks again along the same line, then backing or a fitted piece screwed to framing, then tape and thin coats of compound, each a little wider than the last, with drying time between them.
Texture is what gives a patch away. Orange peel gets orange peel, knocked down or not to match, and a flat ceiling in an older house is never quite as flat as new board, so it gets blended. Cracks over a door or along a ceiling line are movement, not damage, and they come back unless the joint is taped rather than filled. Popped nails get set, coated, and the stud refastened.