r/DIYhelp

Hi all, I’m a renter in an apartment who’s less than stellar at hanging curtain rods (drill doesn’t go far enough for the anchor) and in the process I messed my wall up a bit. And still didn’t really fully manage the curtain rod part. I’ve been living with the crooked curtain and mangled wall for a while now and want to finally do it right, but not sure where to start. Here’s what I think are my options:

1. Try to fix the holes in the walls myself, and then after the wall is fixed hire someone to install the curtain rod properly. For context I do not have any of the tools needed to patch the walls, so I’d need to buy them somewhere.
2. Hire someone to fix the curtain rod first, and then fix the holes in the wall myself.
3. Hire someone to patch the walls so I know it’s done right, and ask if I can pay them to fix the curtain rod too

My problems with 1 and 2 are that I’m not very handy (as you can see with the wall) and I’d also need to buy everything needed to patch the holes. Any advice for how I should tackle this? Should I just suck it up and try doing it myself? Any help is greatly appreciated

EDIT: thank you all for your help I will be hiring this out and just trying again next time 🫡

I found a hole in the ceiling of our hallway closet in our townhome. (See picture, taken from below). It is 14" x 2", and there appears to be wood (joists?) right up to the edge of the hole on both small ends and one of the long sides (the bottom on the provided image). I assume the exact placement of this hole between these joists has something to do with why this hole is even here to begin with, but I have no idea. The other long side butts right against the cabinet frame, and on the other side of that is our HVAC vent, which you can see at the top of the photo. Most drywall patching videos I've seen suggest to add a backing board, which I can't do here because of all the things around the hole. I considered doing a "California patch", but it looks like this hole might be too big for that, especially since it is in the ceiling. I know there are metal mesh patches as well, but similarly, I'm not sure if that is appropriate for this sized hole.

Bits of stuff have been falling from the hole recently into the things in our closet, so I'd like to patch it up somehow. Wondering what the simplest solution is here. I'd love to not have to make the hole bigger, if possible. It's tricky getting tools in here because the closet has shelves. Thanks for any advice.