How Do I Repair A Popcorn Ceiling

By Matt Weber

Water leaks are house killers, and this drywall repair story is testament to that. Human activity fast at the first sign of a water trouble, because chances are good the leak has existed for a while earlier you've discovered it. This means that damage which has already occurred might be hidden in the walls or ceiling, and will simply worsen until the problem is resolved.

The ugly, melted, mold-stained ceiling shown in this article is the result of a leaking bathtub overflow gasket from the room above. Near of the mildew had been concealed by the ceiling texture (which had been coated in latex paint and served as a kind of leak-hiding "skin" for a while).

A little piece of work with a scraper revealed that not only had the ceiling been repaired in the by, simply the new leak had been spreading in secret throughout the drywall. And it wasn't pretty.

We used a scraper to peel away the loose texture and then cutting out the unusable drywall in a foursquare shape. An oscillating tool with a drywall bract is a handy tool for the making the cut-out.

You lot'll need a drywall patch for the ceiling, and then measure the thickness of the drywall. It'southward common for ceilings to utilize 5/viii-inch drywall while the walls are i/2 inch, considering the thicker sheets tend to resist sagging. Cutting a replacement patch from drywall that's the same thickness.

It's a good thought to cutting ii×4 blocking to fit between the joists and straddle the joints between your patch and surrounding ceiling drywall. Toe-screw the blocking in identify with three-in. fasteners. The blocking volition support the patch edges with solid backing to minimize movement and forestall cracking in the finished ceiling.

Drywall tends to crack and crumble when screwed within an inch of its edges. To forestall dissentious the patch, we attached an intermittent two×4 block between the joists then we could drive screws through the middle of our patch instead of the edges. Make sure to install the blocking flush with the bottom edge of the ceiling joists.

Insert the drywall patch into the hole and fasten to the middle cake with drywall screws.

We filled the joints and spiral heads with a flexible spackling compound and skim-coated the entire patch to blend with the surrounding ceiling.

Nosotros used Gardner Flex-North-Fill spackling compound, which not merely stays flexible to foreclose cracks, merely it has a congenital-in primer, which saves an extra stride.

After the spackling compound has completely dried, the side by side stride is to apply the ceiling patch. Spray-on and brush-on "popcorn ceiling patch" products are bachelor, but we prefer the castor-on variety.

The brush-on patch allows united states to move effectually the aggregates and adjust the texture to more closely match the surrounding ceiling. One time the texture had stale, I cutting a pocket-size slice of crown molding and finish-nailed it as a transition slice betwixt the ceiling and shower environment.

The Popcorn Ceiling Patch is a latex-based product that should be coated with shellac-based primer to preclude staining. If your textured ceiling has been painted like the i in this article, then stop the repair with a matching topcoat.