Stucco ceilings suck.

[c9]

The entire condo has stucco ceilings. And for the most part it's OK, the stucco is the typical fairly-easy-to-paint variety. But in the kitchen there's a different type, which crumbles as soon as you touch it. So painting takes forever, since the roller gets covered in stucco almost instantly. I was getting about four square feet per hour painted. And that's just the bad first coat.

How to make a big mess: decide the loose stucco's gotta go, and scrape the entire ceiling with a putty knife. Goodness what a mess. The ceiling is better (I hope), but so much for the nice clean anything. :)

Comments

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

This is the same stuff we ran into when we painted the big bedroom at our old place on Charlotte Street. Remember that place? You lived with us briefly in June of that year.

The first time we tried to put primer on the walls, I put paint on the roller, rolled the paint onto the wall in an upward direction, reversed my direction, rolled down... and the wall came off onto the roller.

After two days and lots of misting, steaming, scraping, and swearing, we finally got the walls clean enough to paint. God, what a mess though. To make matters worse, it was the hottest July on record, we were on the 3rd floor of a three floor house, and the storm windows wouldn't come off.

That was a job. But the room looked fabulous when we were done!

[c9.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm not interested in that kind of work. I've managed to scrape and paint a little to make it workable. But I suspect we'll be hiring some professional to make the ceiling smooth and pretty before we try to paint it again. :)

I just don't understand why the different stucco types. The rest of the condo is *fine*, and easily paintable. It's just the kitchen. And we wouldn't even be bothering if the previous owner hadn't smoked like a New Brunswicker. (*grin*)

[simplisticton.livejournal.com]

"Real" stucco is meant to be painted, but it soulds like the stuff on your kitchen ceiling was the "spray-on" variety, which is what was on our walls. It's evil crap.

If I remember 70's/80's style guidelines correctly (and I'm not suggesting I do), stucco ceilings were generally restricted to bedrooms, livingroom, halls and the like. Kitchens and bathrooms were rarely stuccofied. Maybe the previous owners just decided they wanted stucco everywhere and stuck you with this problem. No pun intended.