Repairing sagging ceiling plaster at edge of brick wall

Hi all,

First post (please be gentle!). I am painting a rumpus room ceiling (to be a home theatre room) and am in the prep stage, fixing cracks etc.. The ceiling plasterboard which abuts a feature brick wall, for about a 1.5-2 metres part of its length, is sagging about 1-2 centimetres. This is very noticable because of the brickwork of course. Ceiling height is 2.36 metres.

My mate who is doing the painting has tried to repair it but we have run into problems: right at the edge, where the sag occurs, we have no crossbeams to work with to use as supports for the plasterboard. It would appear there is some weird timber duct as part of the heating system which runs down the length of the room at this edge and the crossbeams have been cut away for about 18" from the brick wall to accomodate this. Where the crossbeams are accessible (further into the ceiling), the plaster seems very firmly attached already.

Its a split level place, so we cannot access the sagging bit through the ceiling without damaging the floor above. When you push the sagging plaster up, it holds/grips for a while, but I guess the continual expanding/contracting of the ducted heating is causing it to drop down again the next day.

The ducted heating vents which come off this stupid in floor/ceiling channel are pretty hopeless (hardly any heat at all), but I can live with that problem.

Any ideas anyone on what to do to repair or disguise the sagging ceiling? It doesn't seem to be getting any worse, it just looks really horrible. Many thanks for any clues.

Cheers.

When you say it stick overnight ... is that stud adhesive that you have applied?

Can you put some screws through the palster into the duct?

Could yopu put some sort of decorative rail along the brick wall to act as a lip and hold the ceiling up? Like a cornice but maybe out of timber that you could screw to the bricks?

Obbob,

Not stud adhesive -- it just sort of grips to the brick work by friction.

Our first repair attempt was to try to use what we could see of the duct work as a support but its material is so thin its hardly any support at all. This worked for the bit we could access (we got to the duct's "support" and screwed into that (about 1 cm wide to go for!) via the heating vent in the floor above. Unfortunately we couldn't get far enough along the vent to do the rest and as there was wiring and piping nearby we weren't prepared to "take a stab" so to speak! The room above where it is worst does go into a wardrobe so I guess we could make a hole in the chipboard floor there to continue this attempt.

Your suggestion of a support rail or cornice is a good one. I might want to put curtains there down the track so we just need to be pretty careful about sizing the rail so as to be compatible with getting curtains installed later. I'll check this with the curtaining people today.

Your input is appreciated.

Great ... the only other thought was regarding it being a theatre room. That isn't tha wall you were going to mount the screen was it? Maybe the top rail for the screen could be right up the top and be useful in this repair?

Good thought but no, the problem child wall is the left hand long side to where the screen will be.

Cheers.

My place has plaster cornices onto brick wall in some rooms. The botttom edges of the cornice are held with masonary nails. They drove them below the level of the cornice and filled the mark.

If the bricks are too hard you could probably push up the cornice to the right position drill a hole through the cornice and put in rawlplug (or similar) and then screw a screw in with a washer or other device to grab the cornice and then fill over the screws.

We carried out a fix today, assisted by these ideas. We needed to get on with the paint job pretty quickly, without compromising options down the track for either adding curtains, or a nice cornice or rail feature later on. We have used some very small (25mm) metal L brackets as supports for the sag and used plugs into the masonry to hold them (that spagetti stuff, with screws inside). It was a little tricky getting them at the required height as the drill hole had to go real close to the edge of the brick and the mortar. Because of this, had to add a little thin ply to up the height a little. We've hidden as best we can with plaster. With a little matching red paint on the brick side and the dark ceiling colour for the ceiling, well we wouldn't win a prize, but its not too noticable and its fixed the sag. I'm sure down the track when my pocket has stopped haemorrhaging due to the home theatre gear I'll get up the pucka to do the curtains or a rail/cornice of some kind and effect a better repair then.

Cheers all and thanks to Obbob and Durwood in particular.

No problem ... sounds like a good effort.

Come in late on this one. I would have propped the ceiling level then cut out a section (to be repaired later), big enough to get your hand through.

Then scrim the ceiling to the bricks from above using cornice adhesive.

Better if you could mix with sizal or fibre glass strand but not entirely needed.

You could still do this if you wanted to rid yourself of the brackets.

Use a fairly wet mix if you do and work it into the back of the board to counteract the dust layer.

Cheers

Rod

If you are making a home theatre, I would have removed all the ceiling plaster, laid acoustic insulation to dampen noise and then put the ceiling back up again.