Wall Repair Experiment

Left post pulled out of wall:


The damage was covered by the wall plate, so I didn't want to do a drastic repair job and have to do spackling and try to match the original texture.


Measured the irregularly shaped hole:


Assembled some tools to get started and found a rectangular board I had in my stash of lumber pieces. I'd originally thought of using dowel rods but didn't have any, probably worked out better:


Held the board to a playset using a vise and sawed back at an angle.


Hard to see in my poor quality photos, but I sawed the board in the center from the tip and drilled 1/16" holes at the skinny ends.


I then sawed the board back from the tip to quarter it, then tied fishing line in the holes to pull pack the plugs.


Even without any marionette experience, it went smoothly, putting in the plugs the fat end first and pulling them all out together till they wedged in. After I did this I pulled them taut till they wedged in together fairly solidly then used wood glue to make them stick together. I jammed a toothpick in the center to make them wedge in just a bit more. It sat overnight drying.


I used a Dremel tool with a cutting wheel and cut off about half of the extended wood. My intent was to do this to drill a hole in the center and not worry about pushing it into the wall. It turned out that pulling out the toothpick left a hole, so I didn't have to drill one.


After first cut:


So I cut it as flush as possible then used a grinding attachment in the Dremel to make it flush with the wall. I had to cut off very little of the drywall paper to have a flat surface.


There were a few spaces around the edges, so I wedged in some toothpicks. First tried a #8, 3/4-inch wood screw (shown here) but changed to a #8, 1-inch metal screw to connect plate to wall.


Surprisingly, it worked -- so far.


The chore went quickly. I have power tools to use instead of the coping saw, but it was 105 degrees and muggy outside, so I wanted to suffer I guess.