I'm nearly ready now to come back again

[venta]

Those of you who have visited our flat will know that we inherited a rather over-blown 1920's bathroom from the previous inhabitant. In the first instance I found it terrifying, but have grown to love its green and jet black tiling.

Anyway, it's lit by four wall lamps, each with a large white glass globe. This morning I took off my dressing gown and somehow managed to flail an arm such that I hit one of the globes.

Oops.

I tried to catch it as it fell, fumbled, missed, and waited for the smash as it hit the tiled floor.

And waited.

Err?

Of course, the globe is screwed to the light fitting. You can't knock it off. What you can do is wrench the entire fitting from the wall and leave it dangling on its wires.

The previous inhabitant was something of a DIY-er, we think. And this light reveals more of his work. The holes in the wall are huge, big enough to fit a finger in, with the rawl plugs packed in with slivers of wood. To be honest, I'm slightly surprised the light didn't fall off the wall years ago.

But now we have the problem of fixing it. Anyone have any advice on filling large holes in walls? I'm worried that Polyfilla might just form a large plug that will pull straight back out again.

Comments

[eniel]

If you're just filling the hole and not pouring the fixture back, you can buy fine metal mesh from diy stores that you fit in the hole so that the polyfilla had something to cling to.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I am hoping to put the fixture back! And it won't be easy to drill new holes elsewhere, because of course the wires disappear into the wall at the right spot for the existing holes.

[(Anonymous)]

There are some good no-more-nails products that should allow you to fill/glue rawl plugs in place. It depends on the integrity of the stuff (plaster/brick/whatever) around the holes. If that's crumbly, then it's a lot trickier to get something that holds, as the plaster will just pull out. If it's plasterboard with a cavity behind, then it may be harder to fill, but there are metal rawl plug/screw combies with expanding flanges that will sit behind boards when you screw the screw in.

[dr-bob.livejournal.com]

Oops - that was me.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Mildly crumbly plastered wall. I haven't really interviewed it yet to see how crumbly.

I'm slightly fearing it may involve digging a channel to shuffle the wires along 8", fitting the lamp back to a new and unsullied bit of wall, and then replastering over all the evidence. And I'd really rather not do that :-)

[shermarama]

My walls in Brighton were generally impossible to not drill a huge wide hole in, because they were made of crumbly stuff with a random flint element, which tended to send the drill bit off sideways. My solution was a multi-stage process which went: 1) drill a big messy hole, 2) saturate the inside of the hole with diluted PVA, which binds the surface layers together a bit and eliminates dustiness, 3) once that had dried, backfill the hole with polyfilla, 4) once that had dried, drill a neat hole in the polyfilla. The whole process then took a couple of days, off and on, but seemed to produce solid enough results.

[deborahw37.livejournal.com]

You need to fill the hole with something onto which the filler will grip; what you use depends on the size of the hole and, as there's wiring there should be non conductive and not flammable. I've filled large gaps with everything from crumpled chicken wire to Hessian with some lathes to hold it in place before applying plaster but for this I suggest something like Carlite Browning which is a rough cast plaster

Oh and stabilise any crumbly edges first PVA or you can get Stabaliser

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

When faced with similar issues of absurdly friable plaster, I resorted to massive over-engineering with hammer fixings as long as they had to be to get a decent grip in to the bricks behind.

If there's a deep hole to fill, you want to make sure the filler has dried properly before you drill in to it. This may mean multiple layers and lots of waiting. You can get special 'deep hole' filler that dries a bit quicker (and is easier to apply) for this sort of thing.

Another handy thing is reinforcing tape - I forget the name, but it's a bit like white gaffer tape with thicker strings. I think it's meant for repairing plasterboard. You take the surface back to stable and apply the tape over the hole. Then skim coat with plaster.