I live in Taoyuan. I accidentally bumped furniture into the drywall of my apartment causing about a 1 foot by 1 foot hole.
My question is where can I call to get it fixed? And how much will it cost?
To replicate Taiwanese contruction methods , you may have to use Tin Coke cans as the foundation . Joking . Normally most building have a general handyman … I would ask other residents or management ( if you have ?)
Are you sure it’s drywall? I wonder if drywall is used much in Taiwan.
Funny story. When I first got here I wanted to hang a few pictures in my apartment. I went out and got some small nails. After several failed attempts to tap these little nails into what I thought would be drywall, I realized all my walls are poured concrete.
1 Like
You can do it yourself…
Get some white joint compounds, drywall tape, and patch it up. Use the broken pieces as reinforcement. After that, you will want to plaster over the tape and paint over it, with texture and all that…
Not sure how much it would be to pay someone to do it.
Finding matching paint would be a pain, and can you buy interior paint in small touch up quantities easily?
Paint is not a problem, buy a cheap can of emulsion in the local B&Q for 200NT, add 20% water and roller the whole wall in 10 mins. The issue will be the stippling effect. It may be easiest to break out the existing pieces, stick them back together, quick plaster over the cracks and a couple of coats of paint. If you were moving furniture, is it possible to move it back to cover that spot?
If you’re living in a community style building then ask the maintenance guys for a recommendation on someone to repair, one of them may do it for cash in hand. Note however that as soon as you ask your landlord is likely to know about it. Other wise ask at your local 水電. There’s a lot of “depends” in the job but I’d imagine you’ll get change from NT$5,000, how much depends on how much of 差不多 is acceptable.
Basically what gives drywall strength is the paper covering, so you have to glue paper tape over the crack.
It’s really easy to do it yourself and paint over it and nobody needs to know.
Drywall is used in some places in Taiwan, it’s not often used in crap homes because everything is concrete but for room divisions they are great, since they have fire resistance and blocks out sound reasonably well (the thin plywood does not block out sound at all and have zero fireproofing, and costs more than a sheet of drywall).
Used a lot. Classic gongyu 公寓 setup: Concrete outer shell, bricks for the bathroom wall, drywall for the rest.
They also like to use the other stuff, calcium silicate stuff that isn’t covered in paper but is 10 times harder to work with. It’s also more expensive too but not really water resistant by much. Supposedly it has better fire resistance however.
In my house the landlord used 3/4" plywood on the inside of the sheet metal because he thinks a thief can simply cut through the sheet metal and punch through drywall. 3/4" plywood is like 3 times the price of drywall too.