Ceiling repair, overhead and out of mind.

A straight hairline crack that follows a drywall seam and has not moved is usually cosmetic. A crack that comes with sagging, staining, or a widening gap is worth a professional look. Here is the quick self-check we use.

Most ceiling cracks are cosmetic. A thin, straight line along a taped seam usually comes from seasonal movement or from joint compound shrinking as it ages, and we can re-tape and finish it in one repair. Spiderweb or map-pattern cracks in an older ceiling are usually surface-level too. A crack needs a closer look when it comes with other signs: a section that bows or sags, a gap wide enough to slide a coin into, a brown stain along the line, or a crack that reopens in the same place after it has been patched. Any of those means something behind the surface is moving or getting wet, and painting over it will only last a few months. If your crack is straight, thin, and not changing, it is almost certainly a cosmetic repair. If it is getting wider, longer, or stained, send us a photo and we will tell you what we see.

A sagging or bowing ceiling is a serious problem, and it is not a DIY job. When a ceiling drops, the cause is almost always above the surface. Water from a leak upstairs may be soaking the drywall, the fasteners may be pulling loose from the framing, or, in older homes, the plaster may be coming loose from the lath (the wood strips it was applied to). A wet ceiling is heavy, and a section that has come loose can fall. Don't push on it, don't try to screw it back up, and keep people out from under it. Send us a photo or have it looked at. We will find out why it is sagging, fix the cause, replace the damaged section, and refinish it so the repair blends into the rest of the ceiling.

Fix the source before you touch the stain. A water stain on the ceiling is the visible end of a leak that started somewhere else: the roof, a supply line, a shower pan, or an appliance on the floor above. If the leak is still active, primer over the stain won't hold. The stain bleeds back through the fresh paint, and moisture stays trapped inside the ceiling, which is how mold starts. The right order is to stop the leak, let the ceiling dry, then prime with a stain-blocking primer and repaint. If the drywall has gone soft, it gets replaced instead. When the drywall itself is damaged and not just stained, that is water-stained ceilings work, and we do the finish work after the dry-out is done.

Textured ceilings are the hardest part of a ceiling repair to get right. A patch that is flat and smooth on a textured ceiling stands out as much as one painted the wrong color. Light from windows and fixtures hits a ceiling at a low angle, which shows every seam a wall would hide. We match the existing texture, whether it is a light spray, a knockdown, or the hand-troweled finish found on a lot of older Portland ceilings, so the repair blends into the ceiling around it. On a ceiling you can see from anywhere in the room, we often re-texture the repaired ceiling out to a natural break, such as the wall line, so there is no edge between old and new for the light to catch.

Most ceilings do not need to be torn out. If the damage is limited to one area, a spot repair with a matched texture blend is usually the right call and costs less. We cut out the damaged area, replace it, and blend the texture and paint into the rest of the ceiling. The exception is when the damage is widespread, the whole ceiling is stained or cracked, or the texture is so unusual that a partial match will never fully hide. In those cases a full re-skim (a thin coat of compound over the entire ceiling) or a replacement gives a better result than a patch. We will tell you which one you need before you spend anything, and the estimate is free either way.