Painting a Ceiling

If a room in a house or other building looks boring or even not very pleasant, it's probably time to remodel. At home Dad and I are remodelling the lounge room. It is a good idea to start with the ceiling and work down. The ceiling requires little to no masking if you are painting the walls later, which we are.

These instructions are for painting the ceiling and cornice together. If you are only painting the ceiling but not the cornice, consider using an edge roller pad.

First, you will either need to remove all the furniture or cover everything with a drop sheet. As we are redoing the floor, we removed everything except the very worn out carpet.

My cat helped with both removing the carpet and removing things from the carpet.

Tiddles helping me put pads on the coffee table so I can slide it over the tiles

Tiddles insisted on her bed staying there until the last minute, but she likes the carpet in any case

Cleaning and sanding helps to make the paint stick and stay there.

Clean the ceiling using sugar soap (note it's only called 'sugar soap' because the stuff looks like sugar when dried, but definitely don't taste it 🤮). I used a floor mop.

Next, fill holes along the ceiling cornice. Scrape out loose material and put in wall filler.

On a step ladder or platform

Scrape out loose bits, fill

Close up of my efforts

Next, sand the ceiling. Start with the cornice.

Using a handy little sandpaper sponge

Then the ceiling. I used a mop with sandpaper clipped onto it with a document clipper. Note the sandpaper only stays on if you sand as shown.

Sure beats doing it from a stepladder

Mask around any lights and vents. Remove light covers (the ones in our house unscrew, some may unclip).

Mask around air con vents

And mask around light fittings

Put a drop sheet over anything you don't want paint spatter on. In our case, we don't care about the carpet as we're getting rid of it. We will also need it to cover the tiles in the hallway (behind Dad) when we are painting there.

Very helpful cat again

Paint the cornice and the ceiling together ideally so they are both wet at the same time. Also paint around any obstructions like lights with a brush. Brush an edge (cornice or obstruction) before rolling next to it.

Using a brush to paint the cornice

Using a roller to paint the ceiling

Take the masking tape off before the paint dries. In our case, we only needed one coat of paint. If you are doing two coats, read the paint can instructions for the wait time. Our paint can says 2 hours.

And put your sunglasses on so you don't get too dazzled by the newly painted ceiling 😎