Hi folks,

I bought my first home at the beginning of the year. It's a 1920s bungalow with plaster walls and ceilings. I thought all I was going to have to do to this house was strip wallpaper, paint walls, and refinish the floors, but more projects just keep popping up.

The ceilings are plaster and I thought I could just paint them, however, now I notice that most of them have a slight texture to them. As far as I can tell it isn't an intentionally applied texture. I really just looks like the last people to paint the ceilings did a poor job in roller selection and application and left the paint textured as it dried. I tried to send the rough spots out with 220 paper and it didn't have much of an effect. Even flexible and rigid scrapers aren't doing much to this paint texture. Has anyone come across this and found a good fix? The closest solution I've found was that joint compound could be applied to the whole ceiling, but wow, that's a lot of work and a lot of expense and my budget is wearing thin. I considered getting a sanding disc and attaching it to a drill, but I'm not sure if that would be wise or not. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you!

 

Welcome to the forums!

Most plaster I have seen around me has a light sand texture which is likely what you have. Even with a very thick nap roller, it is hard to put any significant texture on a surface.

If you want it 100% smooth, I suggest renting a drywall sander with about 80 grit paper. Or you can skim coat it with joint compound and then sand it with the above sander. Joint compound is rather cheap and you would likely only need one or two pails. Total cost for JC is about $25 and the sander rental is about $75.

 

It could be the plaster, but the texture is really inconsistent and seems to follow a roller kind of pattern. The other thing is that it's not in all the rooms. Some ceilings have smooth plaster ceilings and some don't. My mother is telling me not to worry about it because no one looks that closely at the ceiling unless there are big holes in it. The kitchen ceiling is the worst as you can see where different repair jobs have been done to it, mostly fixing small cracks, but the colors and textures are different in various places. I'll try to get some pictures, but it may not matter as your solution sounds like the way to go.

 

The texture is probably present because of the previous repair jobs. If we could see a picture of the texture, we could probably guide you on how to make it blend better than what you have now. My whole house has textured ceilings, I rarely ever notice them. Skim coating or sanding a whole ceiling is a ton of work, you will discover muscles you never knew you had. Painting with a basic, flat ceiling paint will also help hide some imperfections. Any kind of sheen on the ceiling will make things stick out like a sore thumb.

 

Pics would help. I doubt sanding would be overly effective. Latex paints don't respond well to heavy duty sanding - it melts and gums up the paper

Skim coating doesn't have to be expensive unless you pay someone to do it for you. A thin coat of joint compound will cover a lot of ground [ceiling]

 

Picture time. Of course with my less than expert photography skills, capturing flaws on a flat white ceiling is easier said than done.

Bedroom ceiling


Great Room View 1


Great Room View 2


Kitchen View 1


Kitchen View 2


The kitchen is the only room that shows obvious signs of previous repair gone wrong. The more I think about how time consuming this project will be (I'm camping out in the basement while I work on the rest of the house) the more I'm thinking about just fixing the kitchen ceiling.

I'm not sure how well the pictures show it (and the contrast is going to vary on each person's monitor), but it almost looks like you can make out the plaster application lengthwise across the ceiling and the paint strokes against that (going left to right). This room is huge. 13 x 25 or something like that.

In the bedroom ceiling picture, the texture is sort of misleading. Some of the larger bumps you see are simply dirt and dust that I haven't wiped down yet. Probably should have done that before I took the pictures.

I've got five gallons of flat white that I was just going to paint on the ceiling until I started getting nitpicky. Maybe I should focus on making the kitchen ceiling look better and paint the other two. I could always cover them up with something neat like a tin ceiling down the road.

 

Unfortunately, I can't make out anything in any picture except the kitchen. What is above the patch areas, a bathroom? It looks to me a lot like somewhat tried to spot prime with kilz or other stain blocker and failed to over paint the entire ceiling. Before you over commit to a large repair job, take the flat white paint and roll a coat over the areas in the kitchen 1 picture. Don't at this stage worry about cutting in the edge near the walls. I'm interested in how a consistent color will blend the defects. Feather the quick rolled coat out a good ways past the area in question so you can step back and get a good look. Should take longer to clean out the roller than it will to roll a coat.

 

There is no plumbing above the kitchen. There is a weird loft room on the second floor, but that's it. The discoloration actually looks worse in that picture than it does in person. I kind of think what they did was put some spackle or joint compound in the cracks, but then instead of painting the whole ceiling they just painted those areas with a brush and the paint colors didn't match exactly. I'll try as you said with the paint, but I probably won't get to it this weekend. Thanks again for all the input.

 

Hard to tell from the pics but it might be a sand texture which is typically an additive for paint and is applied with a roller. I like czizzi's suggestion of applying a roller full [or 2] of paint over the repaired areas - that will give you an idea of how bad [or good] it will look if you just repaint the ceiling.