Repairing Water Damage to the Wall - Living Room Update

So on my big list of to do's to the living room, we included repairing the water damage to our living room wall. Here's the backstory:

We told our landlord that there was leaking from our AC unit into our house. It would go about twenty minute and have a steady drip straight onto our outlet! Not very safe. Frightening, actually. It was summer and it was in the 100's and it was out of the question to ignore our AC unit. Brandon thought it was tilted forward rather than backward and that's why water was coming downhill to us. The landlord said he just installed the unit and that couldn't be it.

His solution: Put a towel under the unit so the water will be forced out the backside outside. Well, okay.

It worked! We ran it for hours and had no visible or audio of water dripping. Hurray! But it was unsightly. The next morning when we came out to our living room, we saw this:


Yeah. The water had been forced into our wall, underneath the paint forming a huge pocket of water. The landlord was e-mailed pictures of the damage and he told us to break open the water sac, let it air dry out and we could repaint later.

Brandon has been painting with his father for close to 10 years now. He did not think this was a good solution. With the landlord's permission and our promise to pay if we further damaged the place, Brandon and his dad agreed to fix this themselves.

With his father, they broke the caulking on the frame around the unit, unscrewed it and re tilted the unit. Not a lick of leaking since. It was a tilt issue.

After breaking the water bubble and letting it air dry, a few things were apparent: we would have to cut off the excess paint that was now dried out and warped beyond saving. We would also have to re-mud the wall since the water damaged down to the sheet rock. In addition to re-mud, we'd need to re-texture the damaged area, prime it and finally paint over it.

Well, on this past Sunday, I told B it was past time to fix that ugly wall. His father came over with his painting tools and they got to work.

On Sunday, they:

- cut off the warped paint portion

- mixed up wall mud and applied it to the gaping hole (it was probably 6" x 24")

- sprayed new texture over the dried mud

On Monday, Brandon:
- applied primer to the new texture
- applied the first coat of paint

Today (Tuesday), Brandon:
- finished touching up the paint

And we have a beautiful looking wall. The photo appears shiny because I took a picture with the wet touch-up paint just applied. After drying, it will look like the rest of the wall.

You can't tell that there was ever a hole in the wall.

Still to-do:

- Re-caulk the frame around the AC unit
- Putty in screw holes (at landlord's request)
- Repaint the frame

I think this looks a heck of a lot nicer than the landlord's suggestion of cut it off and paint over the hole. Uhm, yeah.