For a long time, I’ve loved the idea of a turquoise nursery. So when we were transforming my office into Ellie’s room, I knew I didn’t want to change the colour. However, we did have to do some painting when I removed my gallery wall and my display of vintage hats in favour of more baby-friendly art.

Sooooo many holes (and weird reflections from the light fixture).

There are a few tricks to patch and repaint a gallery wall.

The first step is obviously to patch the holes. Use your favourite drywall spackle. Let it dry and then sand the patches so they’re nice and smooth. Do a second coat of spackle if any of the holes are extra deep and sand again. (Spackle sometimes shrinks as it dries, so you may find you have an extra dimple to fill in.)

Once you’re happy with the patches, it’s important to prime. Painting directly over the “raw” patches will result in “flashing.” This means dull or shiny spots on your wall. While the colour may look the same, the patches will still be visible as the drywall paste absorbs the paint differently than the surrounding wall, which has already been painted.

Prime gives a fresh surface for your paint to adhere to. You can limit your priming to just the patches, but make sure to cover all of the raw drywall paste.

The next step is paint. Again, you don’t have to paint the whole wall. Cover the primed area completely with paint.

The final step is to repaint the wall–the entire wall. Time, sun or slight variation in the mix stirred up by the paint store may lead to variation in your paint. So while your patches may only be in one section, repainting the whole wall ensures that the paint looks completely uniform.

However, you do not need to repaint the whole room. Stop painting at the corners, either an outer or an inner corner works. Even if your paint is a slightly different tone, the difference won’t be noticeable if you “break” at a corner.

The result will be a seamless finish and no one will be able to tell that you repainted.