Ceiling Repairs Perth Homeowners Can Trust

The smallest job we take on is a patch of about a square metre, and that starts at $700 before painting.

Past that the price follows the work rather than a price list. Patching and flushing one spot is one job. Dropping a whole ceiling, carting the waste out and putting a new one up with new cornice is another.

The one that catches people out is reframing. If the joists above are twisted or bowed, new sheets cannot go straight onto them, and none of that is visible from the room below until the old ceiling comes off.

We are not the cheapest and we do not pretend to be. We get beaten on quotes regularly, usually by someone who has not been up in the roof to see what is actually there.

Press up on it. If there is any give at all the ceiling is starting to fail, because it should be solid against the structure above.

Two more signs are visible from the floor once you know to look for them. Lines showing through the surface, and screw holes starting to appear where the fixings are pulling through the sheet.

Stains matter too, and not only water stains. Possums and rats living in a roof space leave urine that comes through the plasterboard, and that turns to mould the same way a leak does.

None of these fix themselves. Every one of them means the sheet is losing its grip on the joists, and it only goes one way from there.

If the sheet is still sound and has only come away from the structure, it gets re-strapped or re-screwed. Once water or sag has ruined the board itself, it comes down.

Sometimes the answer really is that simple. A ceiling that has dropped slightly can often just be screwed back up, which surprises people who had already decided they were up for a whole new ceiling.

What we will not do is force a sagged ceiling back up flat. Plasterboard that has held a curve for years cracks and starts to disintegrate the moment you push it, so the repair either holds it where it is or replaces it.

Water is the other line. Once it has sat on plasterboard for even a couple of hours mould starts, and mould does not stay in the one spot, so that ceiling is a replacement rather than a patch.

We will talk you out of a new ceiling when a smaller fix will genuinely do, even though the bigger job is worth more to us. The job we say no to is polishing up a ceiling that was never going to look right afterwards.

On the worst ones the only thing still holding the ceiling up is the cornice around the edge of the room.

That is not a figure of speech. When a ceiling comes down we score the cornice first, and on a badly sagged one the whole lot can come away in a single piece the moment the cornice is touched.

A living room ceiling is a lot of weight to have hanging off a strip of plaster. Anything bulging, cracking further or dropping in one area wants looking at rather than watching.

If yours has already let go, that is a make safe rather than a repair, and it is a different phone call.

That is a make safe, not a repair. We clear the debris, tarp the opening so the ceiling space is closed up, and get the room safe to be in, usually the same day.

The repair itself comes after, once the area is safe and we can properly see what we are dealing with. Trying to do both in the one visit is how jobs get rushed.

Insurance companies use the same term. If you are claiming, a make safe is what they will be arranging and what they expect to see billed.

A single room, old ceiling down and new one up, is a day. Add painting and it is two. Most jobs are booked in and finished inside a week.

Those are real numbers rather than the ones that win a booking. A bigger room or a high ceiling takes longer, and reframing twisted joists adds to it again.

About half our quotes are done over the phone with no site visit, which is usually the part that holds a job up rather than the work itself.

Very. This is a filthy job, and we would rather tell you now than have you find out on the day.

We put protection down before anything comes off, we sweep up, we cart the waste away and we wipe the walls down. What we do not do is scrub out your house afterwards, because that is a different job and it is not what you are paying us for.

Two things people are usually not told. The first is that you need to clear the room yourself before we arrive. When that does not happen things get damaged and everybody ends up arguing about it.

The second is that new cornice leaves jointing mud along the wall line that never fully comes off. Your walls will want repainting, not just the ceiling. Anyone who tells you otherwise has not done one.

A roof with no insulation cooks the ceiling underneath it, and gypsum gets more brittle every summer it is baked and cooled again.

It is the same as bending a piece of steel back and forward until it snaps. Or think of a muffin left in the oven. It starts out moist and holding together, and by the end it falls apart in your hand.

That is why a Perth ceiling under a hot uninsulated roof gives up years before one that is not being cooked. Insulation is a small job for what it does, and it protects the ceiling as well as the power bill.