I was finishing the space above a garage. The space was buried in blown in cellulose insulation and we framed in some walls, laid a subfloor, and finished the room. During framing two different people punched a hole in the drywall ceiling below creating a couple large irregular holes and causing it to rain insulation. The space below is an unheated garage.
Now it's time to fix those holes. I see two options:
1) Somehow patch the drywall as-is to keep from dropping another ton of insulation. The holes aren't nice and square and some of the edges would be a good 10 inches from a support to screw into. Don't see any way to easily frame or toenail in 2x4s without cutting more drywall and dropping more insulation. Is there any product or technique that could help here? I've tried those aluminum patches in the past, but wasn't very impressed.
2) Somehow catch all the insulation, then the holes can be cut square back to beams and patched in a normal fashion. How to do this? Vacuum? Any way to put the insulation back up there when installing the ceiling patch? To further complicate matters, the garage in question can't be emptied easily.