Garage Wall and Ceiling Repair

What damages a garage wall

A bumper or side mirror backed into the drywall, a garage door track or opener hardware pulling away from the wall, a leaned bike or ladder, a storage rack that comes loose — garage walls take hits the rest of the house rarely sees. Add years of gear moving in and out, and small dents and holes build up even without one big event behind them. A dent from a bumper usually stays shallow; a sharp corner, like a trailer hitch or a ladder's foot, is more likely to punch all the way through.

Most of what comes through a garage door is a small or medium repair: picture a dent the size of a mirror or a hole the size of a bike pedal, though a storage rack coming down can take out more wall than that. Looking for damage from a different cause entirely, like a cutout a plumber or electrician left behind? See drywall hole repair for the fuller range of causes we patch.

The wall between the garage and the house

Where a garage shares a wall with the house, that wall — and the ceiling above the garage, if there's a room overhead — is treated as a fire separation under the residential code (IRC R302.6). The code calls for at least 1/2-inch gypsum board on the garage side of that wall, and 5/8-inch Type X board on a garage ceiling with living space above it. That rule exists so a fire starting in the garage, from a running car, stored fuel or a water heater, is slowed down long enough for people inside the house to get out.

When we rebuild a damaged section of that wall or ceiling, we use the same type of board that's already in place and tape the joints the way the rest of it is built. A detached garage, or a garage wall that doesn't back onto living space, usually doesn't carry this requirement — either way, we match the board you already have rather than guessing at a different thickness.

Matching a plainer finish

House walls are almost always sprayed with a texture — orange peel, knockdown or smooth — but garages often aren't finished the same way. Some are taped and mudded with no texture at all; others are textured just like the rest of the house. We match whichever one is already on your wall, included at the standard tier for a typical garage repair. If yours is one of the garages with full texture already, matching it is no different from matching texture anywhere else in the house; see texture matching if it happens to be a hand-applied or detailed finish instead.

Once the board and finish are done, the patch is ready for a roller if you decide to paint it.

Getting a firm price

Send some photos of the damage and the year your home was built through the quote page, and we'll text back a firm price built from what you send. Getting that first read costs nothing; on the rare job where the photos don't tell us enough, an in-person look is the option instead, and its cost comes off the repair once you book it.

That year-built question isn't just paperwork: homes from before 1980 are likely to have asbestos in them, and that's a hard no for us regardless of how the garage wall looks. If the damage reaches framing or insulation behind the drywall — not common, but it happens with a hard enough hit — we'll flag that before quoting it as a straightforward patch. From there, size, access and finish are the main things that move the price — the cost guide covers the rest.

Repair day

You don't need to stay home for a garage repair — a code to the garage or a key left in a lockbox works just as well, and we'll send a text once we're headed over. Before we touch the wall, the garage floor and anything stored nearby gets covered with tape and plastic, and the space is swept clean again once the board and finish are done.

We're just as happy working around a parked car or a wall of shelving as we are in an empty bay — just mention it when you send photos so we can plan around it on the day.