Ceiling Water Damage

Ceiling water damage is quite evident in almost every house existing for tenure of ten years or more. You will find ceiling water damage in bathrooms where either the exhaust machinery is located up in the roof or in rooms where a roof vent is located. Water seeks the path of least resistance and will travel far from its origination until it shows up as discoloration in paint on your ceiling. Areas in your roof that are prone to leakage are any places where a roof vent or exhaust vent has been placed for bathrooms or attic ventilation. Other places where water can get in are where your satellite provider has placed the dish, around your chimney or around skylights.

Preventative maintenance can prevent the incidence of ceiling water damage if you go on your roof every spring and fall to check for cracks in shingles or missing shingles or cracks in the roof tar placed around both roof vents and exhaust vents. A liberal application of roof tar to these offending areas will keep ceiling water damage to a minimum.Before attempting to repair the effects of ceiling water damage you need to be confirmed that the source of the damage is repaired. Using Kilz paint to diminish the existence of any mold and covering up the ceiling stain will work until it leaks some more and causes additional discoloration.

You need to feel the affected area and see if the drywall water damage made it too soft or wet. For only paint to be effective you need to make sure that the drywall is completely arid. If it is tremendously wet you need to fix the leak and then blow dry the affected wall. If there is any sagging or change in the drywall surface you will need to cut out the affected area and replace it with a like size piece and frame it with drywall tape then mud it, sand it and paint it to match the original form. This can be a considerable issue if your ceiling is textured. Trying to recreate a texture or pattern in the ceiling is next to impossible unless you do it for a living.

Detecting ceiling water damage in advance of a repulsive destructible situation can help you to save a great deal of money. A good friend was on vacation over the winter and had a pipe break in the shower of his master bathroom. It leaked inside the wall and pooled on the ceiling of his dining room. When he returned home he found a convex ceiling that was about to collapse and destroy his dining room furniture.

He called me right away and I was able to come over and stop the leak and by using our wet/dry shop vacuums to remove the water from a small hole cut in the dining room ceiling before the ceiling collapsed. I had to deal with something similar when my car was flooded and we got to solve the car water damage. Yep, it's pretty unpleasant to deal with such issues.

Over twenty, twelve gallon shop vacuums full of water were invented and later we began the process of cutting out the ceiling drywall and removing the light fixture. Of course we cut the breaker to the room first to avoid any chance of electrical shock. I repaired the break in the pipe in the shower and was able to restore water so toilets and the kitchen could be used. Actually fixing the shower had to be paused.

Our next step was to get a couple of high velocity fans and put them on scaffolding to aim them at the ceiling to dry out the area above the dining room. We also had one fan in the master bath as well. After a few days the rooms were dry enough to begin the major processes of ceiling water damage repair. The crown molding on two sides was damaged beyond reuse so we had to use a miter saw to cut new crown molding to fill in the existing space of crown.

We also decided to replace the entire ceiling as it had a textured finish and neither of us had the experience in making a textured repair. We had taken down most of the ceiling drywall before drying the area and so we only had on other eight foot panel to remove.

Six sheets of drywall, a roll of drywall tape, some drywall mud and a great deal of drywall dust were used and we had a new ceiling up in my friend’s house. Luckily we had measured where the light fixture was supposed to be and so I could cut it out before we put the sheets up. A little bit of wiring and some paint had put an end to our ceiling water damage repair job. However, the interesting part started when we stumbled upon our new very odd problem which came out to be the carpet water damage one. Well, we had to fix that too somehow.