Filling Holes

We like tenants to be able to hang pictures, after all, we want the house to be their home.  But in the house I was working on today, the tenant got a little carried away and used wall anchors.   Dozens of wall anchors.  As I removed them, they left large holes, some of them as large as a penny.

That's too big to fill without some kind of backer.  I have tried many approaches to filling that type of hole but today I had a stroke of what felt almost like genius.  Backer Rod... it's a cylindrical foam that is used for back filling cracks that are too big to caulk without support.  I happened to have a package of 1/2 inch backer rod in the truck that I had purchased for another project.

A utility knife, little cylindrical slices of backer rod, and voila - backed, fill-able holes.  It's always a treat to find a simple solution.  Holes filled, walls touched up, life is good.  On to the next project.