Full-Repair.comOne of the most important steps in achieving coziness in your house is repairing the ceiling. Currently there are many ways to do it. It can be painting and whitewashing, as well as the use of hung ceiling. You are to choose. But the simplest and the cheapest way is painting and whitewashing. Let's examine these methods in detail.
Before painting or whitewashing the ceiling, it has to be prepared, cleaned of old coatings. Clean the areas of the ceiling, where the old putty or stucco is poorly kept, in the case you must clean up the cracks with a spatula and work them with primer for porous surfaces. You should wait for complete drying out, and then you can begin to correct the defects.
To correct the deep cracks, it is better to use putty on a cement basis. If you want to speed up the process, it is possible to use plaster or gypsum-based putty, but in this case the quality of work is reduced.
After the imposition of putty on the ceiling, it must be primed and if necessary puttied again. You must take into account the fact that the layer of putty should not exceed 1.5-3 mm.
If there are small cracks or joints of the ceiling plates, they should be, first of all, glued with cloth for junctions or fiberglass. Alternatively, you can use a simple bandage. If before repairing the ceiling had been painted with emulsion paint, complete putty of the ceiling is not necessary; it is enough only to putty damaged areas. But you should take into account that the texture of the puttied spots may vary considerably from the texture of the areas that were not puttied.
The complete putty of the ceiling is necessary, if the ceiling should be painted with emulsion, and earlier it had been painted with enamel.
Once the ceiling is fully puttied, it should be treated with sandpaper and painted.
Let’s consider method that was used by our ancestors: whitewashing of the ceiling. Before the beginning of the whitewash the ceiling must be primed again. You can use the whitewash, on the basis of lime as well as the chalk based one, but you must not mix them. If the ceiling had been formerly whitewashed with the lime whitewash, then the chalk one would not do, because it will lead to stains and divorces.
The chalk whitewash is often done the following way: 60 g of wood glue and 6 kg of sifted chalk dissolved in about 10 liters of water heated to 36 °C. Or 5 kilograms of chalk, 170-180 grams of wood glue, 120 grams of common soap and 250 grams of laundry blue dissolved in 8 liters of water. This quantity of whitewash should be enough for about 20-22 m² of ceiling.
If you do decided to use the lime-based whitewash you can use the following recipe: 5-6 kg of slaked lime, 900-1000 grams of dyes (before making the whitewash they should be soaked in water), 100-200 grams of table salt (dissolved in a small amount of water). It is necessary to bring the amount of this solution of the whitewash up to 20 liters. The mixed solution can be a bit colored with laundry blue or ultramarine. Before applying this whitewash, the ceiling is better to be slightly dampened.
Most often the air spray (sprinklers) or whitewashing brushes — distempering brushes — are used for whitewashing. A household vacuum cleaner can also be diverted to a spray-gun. In order to do this, put a special nozzle on the jar with the whitewashing. If you do decide to use a brush, you need to remember that all layers should be applied across the direction of light from the window, and the last one should be applied to the window (that is, to light). Otherwise the traces after the brush will be visible.
If you decided to paint the ceiling, first you should determine the type of paint. The waterborne paints are used most often. For the time being the choice of such paints is large enough. Mainly for painting there used silicate, acrylic, silicone and latex paints. In order to choose the most appropriate one, let us consider their characteristics.
Acrylic paints are considered to be most popular. To get a qualitative covering, according to experts, there two layers of acrylic paint will be quite enough. Such coating is sufficiently elastic and can close the cracks with a width up to 1 mm. Acrylic paint is the best fit for creating a high-quality coating, which is resistant to dirt and does not require high vapor.
For coatings with increased requirements to water-vapor permeability, the silicone or silicate paints are better to be used.
Most often the silicate paints are used for painting the mineral surfaces (mineral plaster, painted prior to that with silicon, lime or cement paints). First of all, when applying the silicate paint, the ceiling must be processed with a silicate primer. Silicate paints unlike acrylic ones do not have the ability to conceal the small cracks. But, thanks to the high vapor, these paints are often used for painting the old buildings, the walls of which are not sufficiently protected against the possibility of the groundwater raising. They are perfect for coloring of walls that are exposed to moisture inside the building. Silicate paints hinder the generation of different micro-organisms, and therefore, there is no need to use any antiseptic additives before using these paints.
Silicone paints combine the selected properties of silicate and acrylic paints. Vapor permeability of silicone paints is the same as that of the silicate ones, but silicone paints form a waterproof film. They differ from acrylic paints, because silicone mixes do not soften when it becomes hot, and the painted ceiling practically never gets dirty.
For most mineral coatings silicone paints can be used. They are compatible with acrylic and latex paints. With their help you can repaint silicate surfaces. They are flexible and able to conceal cracks up to 2 millimeters. Prior to their application it is not necessary to use antiseptics. They possess excellent service and decorative qualities. But their price is much higher than that of others.
Selection of paint depends mainly on the premises in which it will be used. For rooms in which it is necessary to wash the ceiling or with high humidity the best choice will be some moisture resistance paint.
The paint is applied on the prepared surface with a roller, spray-gun or with a brush. The paint run-off depends on its properties, so the first thing you should pay attention to is not the volume of the mixture in a container, but the real cost of this paint per unit area.
All the layers of paint or whitewashing should be laid across the direction of light, and the last layer to the direction of light.
It is better to use a roller with short piles. For more strength it is desirable to apply 2-3 layers. After painting or whitewashing, the availability of drafts in the room is undesirable, as well as direct sunlight, in order not to spoil the result of work. It is undesirable to accelerate drying with (the help of) heating appliances.
It is up to you whether to apply paints or whitewash. Whitewashing will cost much cheaper. The paint is suitable for application both in dry rooms and rooms with high humidity, and, if the need arises, some painted surfaces can be washed. They have some advantage over whitewashing, as the quality and scope of them is much higher.
