Parents have always told their children not to play ball in the house. Their reasons: “You are going to get hurt,” or “You’ll end up breaking something.” Good advice but, often, it is advice that’s ignored. Heeding that pearl of parental wisdom would have saved my friends and me a lot of trouble a couple weeks ago on a night that went from basement football to expert carpentry.
It all started innocently enough. Kenny had a few people over to his house just to hang out. Translation: basement football. All was going well when, in the final game, Anthony caught a perfectly thrown spiral and was headed for the end zone when the wall made a perfect tackle. Confetti was not flying but drywall dust was.
We did not see a touchdown celebration. We saw a cavernous hole in the pasty yellow wall. We gawked at each other in complete silence, not knowing what to do. People whispered, “What happened?” “Who did that?” and “Let’s get outta here! Maybe no one will notice.” Unfortunately, the hole was impossible to miss. People playing pool set down their cues and the gamers dropped their Xbox controllers and stared wide-eyed at the wall. It was quite a sight.
The accident happened at precisely 11:15 and I was amazed at how many people had a curfew of 11:20. There was a mad rush for the stairs and the house was empty except for four gamers (myself included) willing to help repair the wall, Kenny, and a poor soul hopping on one foot struggling to put his second shoe on. After the last deserter hustled up the stairs we were left with five brave men and absolutely no knowledge of wall-patching.
Now what? Do we tell Kenny’s parents and have them hire an expensive repairman to fix the wall? Or, do we wing it and fix the hole ourselves? Naturally, we chose the latter.
Our first step was to gather the necessary tools. The first stop was my house to retrieve a battery-operated drill, a square of drywall, and a putty knife. Next, it was back across town to Wal-Mart for joint compound. The everyday low prices only set us back $8 so we were already saving money over the expensive repairman. Finally, we head back to Kenny’s house where we laid out our supplies and got to work.
For some reason I was chosen to be the master carpenter for this project. Since every master carpenter has his trusted journeyman, I enlisted Andrew as my right hand man. Our first step was to get the hole as flat as we could. So, I went behind the wall and carefully pulled back the pink insulation. Fortunately we were able to push fragments of the damaged wall back into place. To give the wall some reinforcement, I held the square of drywall behind the hole while Andrew screwed it in place.
Surprised at how well this has gone, we decided (guessed) what we should do next. I shook the compound and looked at the contents. I thought “I could probably do more harm than good,” but, at this point we were well beyond second guessing, so I spooned a glob of joint compound onto the knife. The putty had the consistency of a Ted Drewe’s concrete and went on the wall like creamy peanut butter. I stepped back and examined my handy work. For a novice it really was not bad. The hole went from being the Grand Canyon to a more manageable vertical sinkhole. The compound was supposed to dry for 3-5 hours, but we did not have that kind of time. It was getting late and we were trying to finish before Kenny’s parents found out. Our solution to speed up the drying process was simple: oscillating fans.
After about an hour, I decided it was time for round two. The second coat of joint compound went on smoother than the first. The wall was looking better by the minute. Wasting no time, I put on a thick third coat and let the fans do the work. I figured we should let these coats dry longer to make sure we were doing this almost according to the directions.
Finally, at approximately 4 a.m., the putty dried and the wall, according to Kenny, was perfectly flat. The only thing left to do was paint. Luckily, I had a half gallon of yellow paint I believed to be a close match. I smeared some on the wall to make sure. Not even close. All yellows, apparently, are not created equal. Suddenly, Kenny came triumphantly out of his back room holding a 5-gallon bucket of the yellow paint used when the basement was first finished. Hope restored, I applied the first coat and we quietly celebrated. After the final brushstroke of the second coat, the wall looked good as new.
After six labor-intensive hours the repair was complete. Kenny’s parents will never know. My recommendation: take your parent’s advice and don’t play ball in the house.