This doesn’t always happen, but we were able to get into this home prior to the clients moving in. This saves them money and us time by not having to work around stuff. Painting an empty house is faster, easier and cheaper than painting a home full of stuff. The clients were very flexible in allowing us to start the job with no notice. (We had a job fall through and needed a place to go tomorrow)
So we worked together and made it happen. Now we get this one done ahead of schedule, and can focus on our last exteriors next week. Win Win.
Once the floors are covered, the windows, cupboards ect are adequately covered, we begin by pole sanding the ceilings and walls. Then we start patching. Some times, this can be extensive as we discover more damage. We want to fix as much as we can prior to begin painting as that will give us the best possible finish.
The dining room walls(blue) had a very heavy orange peal effect. Like a subtle texture from previous bad paint jobs. Given the walls needed some minor patching, we decided to just skim coat the walls in their entirety, so as to smooth out the walls. Existing patches stood out really bad, and any new patches we do would also be very noticeable. After sanding the walls, we rolled on PVA Drywall Primer, then painted the walls. Looks 100x better!
Here is the hole from the before photos. To install the ceiling fan in the 1970’s, they cut a channel into the ceiling and embedded the wire in the ceiling plaster. Then it cracked, a couple people tried to fix it. cracked again to where we are now. So we removed all that, and installed new plaster. Fixing this with drywall would have required a bit of creativity to make it work. With plaster it was a piece of cake.
Below is a small collection of the newspaper we pulled out of the ceiling. We didn’t find any dates, however we determined that it was from the mid 1970’s . $2.50 for a fish fry! Wow!
Coming along nicely..
All finished:
If you’ve ever wondered who still fixes plaster in Western New York, well, that’s us. Carrigan Painting has spent 15+ years patching old ceilings, learning a few things the hard way. Carrigan Painting isn’t a big franchise or a fly-by-night crew and we’re probably the only painters in the area who get excited about old plaster and patchwork
We take a lot of pride in truly seamless repairs.
We don’t just claim we can do something; we back it up with hundreds of real job photos, all categorized by the type of job and location.
This Archive/blog isn’t a sales pitch, just stories, tips, and a few lessons from the field.
Every case study here is written and curated by our owner & founder, Dave Carrigan Jr., a third-generation tradesman and the driving force behind Carrigan Painting.
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