Small repairs: one to three visits
A single hole or crack is usually two visits: one to cut, back, tape and put the first coat on, one to finish and texture. Some repairs need a third coat, which means a third visit.
A contractor who promises a one-visit invisible repair on anything larger than a nail hole is compressing dry time you'll pay for later.
One room: three to five days
A single room hung and finished runs three to five working days including dry time between coats. It is not five days of someone standing in your house. It's short work sessions spaced around compound curing.
Whole house: two to four weeks
A typical custom home takes two to four weeks from stocking board to final sand, depending on square footage, ceiling heights, and finish level. Level 5 adds meaningfully to that.
What actually causes delays
Humidity slows dry time, a wet Georgia August genuinely extends a schedule. Access issues, unresolved framing problems, and other trades working in the same space are the other three.
We build dry time into the schedule we give you rather than promising a date we'd have to cut corners to hit.
Timelines by type of work
A small patch, a doorknob hole or a nail pop, is a two-visit job spread over two or three days. Most of that window is compound drying, not labor.
A ceiling repair usually runs a day longer than the same repair on a wall. Compound sags overhead, so coats go on thinner and there are more of them.
Water damage depends entirely on how dry the framing is when we arrive. If the cavity still reads wet, drying comes first and can add three to five days before we hang a single sheet.
Texture matching adds a half day for sampling and a test board, and it's worth every minute of it. Rushing the match is the fastest way to end up with a patch you can see from the couch.
Painting is a separate trade and a separate window. Primer goes on after our final sand; plan at least a day after we finish before anyone rolls color.
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