Handle for Rail in drywall – huge hole to nowhere…
I took off the railing going to my basement. The old rail was attached to some wood panelling. The wood panelling is now gone and there is nothing left but a large hole. I need to put the hand rail back in time, but not sure how to deal with the hole – and how it is going to hold the rail in the future. See the pic attached. I was thinking about cutting out the hole, to make it larger and then screwing and gluing a piece of wood in the hole. After that , I would putty over the hole with the wood in it and then attach the rail back to it. Any suggestion?
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David
You are going to become (if you aren't already), the poster boy for how the heck am I gonna fix this............
How many points are there along that run that hold the rail and how long is the rail?
Are any other brackets screwed into a stud or solid member?
It'd be easier to fill that hole, then find another place for the bracket in that vicinity-this time into solid wood.
Why don't you hunt for that first?
thanks.
It's just a hole in the drywall, not the result of a slasher attack on the Mona Lisa. Google "drywall patching" and you'll get a dozen articles, with several different approaches for fixing it. It's not rocket science, just tedious and messy.
More important is how you're going to attach the new railing. You need to do an inventory of sorts of the studs and other solid wood members in the wall, and where they sit relative to where you'd want to mount the new railing. It is, of course, critical that a railing have a solid, secure anchorage.
In some cases it might make sense to do something like open the wall and install a flat piece of 2x6 between the adjacent studs. In terms of opening the wall, at this point "in for a penny is in for a pound", since it's not much more effort to repair a 1x2 foot hole than to repair that hole you have.
Do note that the handrail must be attached to the framing somehow -- it's nowhere near sufficient to just anchor it to the drywall.
The only way to fix it so it stays fixed is to cut out the drywall and install some blocking that the rail bracket can attach to. The easiest way is to install a piece of 2 x 6 flat between the studs and srew it into place. Install new drywall which will solve your crack problem and you'll have a secure place to attch the rail.