Kill the Ceiling

It has been my experience in the handyman business, to have clients call for a repair that has been a problem for years. Many of the problems have even disrupted their lives. I have been told by my clients over again;
“We have tried everything and we can’t fix the problem”, “We have lived with this problem for years”. And my personal favorite “I have told Jim for years that this was a problem, but he would not get off his lazy rear-end to fix it, now we have a bigger problem!-HELP!”

Here is another example of questions I have received:

Client:
We have lived in our present house since it was built and have always taken good care of it. If there was ever a problem, we took care of it right away. We wanted to keep up the regular maintenance, so we can keep the value of our house up as high as possible.

About three years ago during the rainy season, we noticed water beading up on the ceiling in our dining room. We called some roofers the next day. After three estimates and lots of advice, we decided to replace the failed flashing that caused the leak, and to completely replace the now 20-year-old roof. We hoped the leak problem was solved for good. After three years and numerous spells of rain, we never noticed another leak.

Now we have our house up for sale. The stain on the ceiling from the leak long ago still shines through the mutable coats of paint we used to try to cover it up.



My reply:
As I always say, if you have major work done that comes with a warranty, make sure that you can transfer it to another owner. A three-year-old roof is a good selling point, especially in your part of the country.

As for your stain, this is a commonly asked question. Your local paint store can help you with the products just for this problem. These products paint on like a primer, but unlike an ordinary paint, it will kill the stain forever. After this stain-killer primer dries, you can paint over it with your ceiling paint and the stain will not come back to haunt you.

Don't let you repairs make you miserable, call your local professional handyman.