Hi I am a bit of a part-time painter doing work exclusively for friends, family and clients of my mothers (she's a realtor). I have been doing this off and on for the last 2 years, and I have begun to face new challenges, other than the occasional nail-hole repair and interior paint job.
Anyway, heres my current problem... The place I'm doing right now has a large crack from settling, it extends from one side of the condo to the other. UP the walls and across the cieling. I was able to spakle and smooth the walls easy enough. However, the owner wants the cieling crack gone as well. This is 'new ground' for me. It is a popcorn type cieling, the crack is the width of the room about 16 ft. and the crack is what I would consider large at least 1/8th in. in some places. Time and money is a concern, since this project is for a client of my mothers, and I am working at a reduced cost to the owner.
I only had one idea to essencially quick-fix the problem. I was thinking of caulking the crack with latex type white adhesive caulk, to avoid the chore of scraping off the popcorn in order to spackle. Then I noticed the Hardware stores sell ceiling patch in an aerosol can, and I thought maybe it would blend-in the caulk line a little.
Is this feasabile? Does anyone have a better way? Or does this need a full tear-down, repair, replace done to it?
Welcome to the forums
If you can get by with caulking, maybe even spray can of texture, that would be the simplest,easeist, cheapest fix. The correct way is to scrape the popcorn so that the crack can be taped and finished, you would then spray popcorn to cover the repair and blend it in.
I have never used a spray can of texture. All pros that I know that have tried them said they were no good. Since you are not trying to texture a repair but only needing to disguise some caulking I believe that it might work well for you.
i have found that the spray type texture ceiling repair/rehab stuff to be very messy(i work in the apt. maintenance industry). while i like to do the job correctly, sometimes it's impossible to do in an occupied unit. if the unit is vacant, do what mark suggests(you can rent popcorn hoppers, at least in my neck of the woods), or if occupied, what i like to use you can get at lowes are tubes of textured applicators , you just dab the stuff on that you want to cover. now they can also make a mess, so be careful. this is really a quick fix, if the unit is vacant though do it right.
barry
What a mess!
The aerosol type ceiling patch stuff was very messy. I tried it in a small area and it went off like a cannon! The stuff went everywhere, and it came out so fast that it was impossible to control and get even coverage. I don't recommend this method, especially since it's over ten bucks a can. In the future, areas with a prevelent damage should probably be scraped and redone. What I was able to do with smaller cracks was just to fill with a little caulking and smoothing out with your finger. Then paint over the caulking. This is probably the easiest and least intrusive method I found today, and it worked rather well.
Well, that's one way to learn do things.
maybe it's just me, but, didn't you read the prior postings, basically telling you that the spray on stuff was a bi**h? the stuff i suggested is about $4.00 a tube, and is better controlled. and as was stated we all would rather do it right, but some times that is not practical at the time. hope everything worked out on this project.
barry
Spraying texture is always messy - doesn't matter if it is an aresol can or a hopper gun.
marksr, ain't telling no lies, i only want to do this stuff is when a unit is vacant. but that tube stuff works pretty good on occupied
units.
barry
I am trying to place my house on the market to sell but have a ceiling issue. About a year ago, we had a leak in an upstairs bathroom and the plumber had to cut through our family room ceiling to get to the pipes. That problem was fixed but you can see a difference in the ceiling. My real estate agent says that is a problem. The area is a section about 4 ft by 4 ft. I noticed that many postings indicate what we have already discovered about the spray can stuff. It makes a mess and doesn't really blend with existing ceiling. Can the tube stuff be used for an area this big? Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated. We have gone round and round with this problem for months.
Welcome to the diy forums
I don't know what the tube stuff is
The best way to repair the texture is to use a hopper gun [runs off air compressor] and respray the repair and surrounding area to make the popcorn blend in. Bags of popcorn come in 3 different size popcorn, small, medium and coarse - medium is the most popular.
You might get a pro to come in and retexture for just a little more than renting the equipment and buying the texture - wouldn't hurt to price it anyway. If you mask off the walls and cover up everything, it should cut the price down - that is where the majority of labor is.
Just used five cans of the spray stuff today! I thought it did a great job! Id use it again for small area's.
Tags: popcorn, ceiling, spray stuff, tube stuff, unit vacant, ceiling patch, cieling crack, small area, spray texture, stuff very
