Ceilings and texture
A ceiling shows every patch, every roller mark and every stain, because the light crosses it sideways instead of hitting it straight on. That’s most of what makes it slower than a wall.
Why does the stain come back?
Because paint doesn’t stop it. A water stain is the mark something left behind, and whatever was in that water will travel straight through a fresh coat and show up again in a few weeks, usually browner than before.
It gets primed with a stain blocking primer first, then painted. That’s the whole trick, and it’s the step that gets skipped.
The other half matters more: find out where the water came from. If the roof or the pipe above it is still doing whatever it did, the ceiling is the symptom and it’ll be back.
Can popcorn come off?
Usually. It’s scraped wet, the ceiling underneath gets skimmed and sanded flat, then primed and painted. It’s dusty work and the room gets covered from wall to wall.
Matching texture so the patch does not show
Most Kansas City ceilings are knockdown, orange peel or a hand texture somebody troweled thirty years ago. A patch is only finished when you can’t find it from the doorway with the lights on.
New texture is sprayed to match what’s already there. If the pattern is knockdown it gets knocked down at the same moment in the drying as the original, and the whole repair is feathered out past its own edge. Then the whole ceiling gets painted, not just the patch, because a patch painted on its own is a different shade of white forever.
What moves the price?
- How high it is
- A vaulted or two story ceiling means staging rather than a ladder, and everything takes longer off a plank.
- Whether texture is involved
- Painting a flat ceiling is quick. Matching a texture is a skill and a second visit while it dries.
- Stains and repairs
- Priming the stains is fast. Finding out what caused them is somebody else's trade, and it comes first.
- What’s under the ceiling
- An empty room is quicker than a kitchen full of cabinets and a stone counter that everything has to come off.
Ceilings usually go in with the rest of the room rather than on their own. What a room costs is here, and the estimate is free.
Next
Most ceilings get painted as part of interior painting. If the stain is coming from outside the house, start with wood rot repair.
More from Unique Painting KC
- Interior painting
- Exterior painting
- Kitchen cabinet painting
- Wood rot repair
- New siding and windows
- Ceilings and texture
- Doors and windows
- Handrails and banisters
- Picking interior colors
- What a job costs
- How much paint do I need?
- See your house in a new color
- The gallery
- What customers say
- Get a free estimate
Got a stain, a crack, or popcorn you are sick of?
Send a photo of it looking straight up. We call back and set a time to come look.