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Ah, we're gonna do this quick and dirty and cheap and simple here today. This is a really difficult thing to patch. I'll show you a patching trick here. All right, all right, there's my hole, and then we'll go here. Okay, instead of cutting the drywall to fit the hole, it is easier to cut the hole to fit the drywall.
You know, they've been using nails on drywall since the '30s. They were little tiny panels. Somewhere along the way they came up with the screw idea, which was a better idea. Installers for years would use the nails just to hang the sheet and then finish with the screws because it's faster. Now that everybody's got electric screw guns, nails are almost obsolete because we use magnetic bits. This is the only issue that I got. This box is sitting proud, so we are going to just make some room here. Very, very therapeutic. I want to throw a screw above and beneath the studs where the patch is.
I'm going to show you how to mix up some mud real quick. I'm going to use a quick-set mud and mesh tape here, so that when I'm done installing the cabinets, everything is dry and we are ready to tile the backsplash. When you're doing projects in a hurry, there's a few tricks you can use. One is the mesh tape. It works in conjunction with the quick-set mud really, really well. You can apply this first. It has an adhesive backing attached to it. Just be careful, over time, if it's left open, it loses a little bit of its grip, so you might have to peel a couple of layers off the roll. If you have a gap beside a plug or something like that, feel free to put the tape all the way down. Okay, and even across the bottom. Any damaged drywall, foreign something to bond to.
All right, now we mix. Because we're doing a tile job here, I don't need much. I just need enough to get a smooth coat and fill my gaps. So we're going to do a volcano style today. Now, it's funny, because I see all kinds of guys out there making videos, and they've got that little hand bucket trough thing, and they throw powder and water, and they're mixing away. It must take them forever to do that. This is the fastest way to get her done. Now, I'm using dirty water, and there's nothing wrong with that in this situation. Dirty water actually is going to dry faster anyway. Okay, we just sprinkle in the top. This stuff does not absorb very quickly, right? It's a bit of a pain, so you've got to have a delicate reach. Okay, when anything leaks out, put a little powder on it, and it's slowly going to absorb into the moat that I've created here. We're just about done. Okay, now we're going to try to mix this up into a little bit of a thick soup. Here we go. In just a few seconds, we'll have mud. It takes a little bit of experience to know how much water versus mud, and it's not time-sensitive in that regard. So if you find it's a little bit too dry for you, feel free to add a little more water, or if it's too wet, add a little more powder. But you see how fast I can whip that together. That is so much faster than that silly little hand bucket idea. I'm not going to have lumps and bumps. Mine's going to be a silky smooth hit. Up in the comment section, if you remember which movie that's from. Here we go, done.
Right now, when you're looking for a first coat like this, you're only looking for the strength. It doesn't have to be perfect to look at, because we're tiling over top of it. In fact, the biggest concern you have in this scenario is smooth, because we are actually going to do this backsplash. You're going to love this. It's going to be a small penny tile. This may not be everybody's favorite tile, but if you're new to tiling, I'm going to show you how to do this backsplash with nothing but a pair of scissors. That is going to be news to a lot of people's ears, because you don't have to have a lot of expensive, fancy tools to do a nice tile job. That'll be next week's video.
Okay, so the basic science behind that product is it's a chemical reaction. If you have well water, it'll usually dry faster. Or if you use warm water, it'll dry faster. Or if you throw on a little bit of heat, there we go. If I was just staying here for one minute, adding a little bit of heat just to kick-start the chemical reaction, then this 45-minute mud will be dry in about 10 or 15 minutes, and I'm ready to tile as soon as I hang those cabinets. Just want to be careful you don't burn it. All right, there we go. That's it. That's the kick-start it needs.