Drywalling bathroom ceiling

[cas]

The ceiling in our bathroom is textured and is cracking. While I'm prepping the bathroom to paint it I'd like to fix the ceiling. The texture is cracking in different places but has no water damage from above. I was going to chip the flaking areas off then retexture it but I'd like to have a smooth ceiling instead (no idea why the previous owners felt the need to texture everything).

Would it be best to just put up some sheetrock to the ceiling and be done with it? if so, what type of sheetrock? (I hear about greenboard, blueboard, etc). I've never taped a joint...is this easy enough for a noob to do?

I'm going to be putting a fan in at the same time. To vent it outside, should I run the ductwork over to the eve of the house and vent it from there or should I run it to the north end of the house (there the wall is vertical) and vent it out from there? Either place aren't easy to get to from the outside since the house is on a hill and is around 3 stories off the ground. :P I could get the hole from the inside but putting up a cover for it would be tricky.

thanks, cas

[cornytheclown]

I would just vent the fan up to the ridge of the roof....hopefully you have ridge vents....or vent it up high in the attic where nothing can get down into it....again, hopefully you have some sort of ventilation...

To remove the old textured ceiling...if its that popcorn stuff you can just spritz it with water, experiment to find out how much, and scrape off the popcorn and mud with a scraper then sand down any remaining mud.... you only want to use enough water to remove the popcorn and mud...you do not want to soak into the sheetrock.

IF you are planning on just hanging another layer of sheetrock beneath the existing layer.... I would hang the sheetrock..install nay fans lights etc.... and then call in a sheetrock finisher to finsih the job...

IF you want...you can finish it yourself.... talk to one of the slugs at home depot or lowes... they can sell you everything you need....... when taping joints the secret is to apply enough joint compound to cover the joint and take the knife and remove as much xtra as possible...several coats using a wider knife each time to level the compound out from the tapered edges of the sheetrock....You want to do as little sanding as possible and doing several light applications over a day will result in less cracking or defects than a couple of heavy coatings of mud.

Probably some internet resources on hanging and finishing sheetrock....

search for "hanging sheetrock" or "how to hang sheetrock"..."how to finish sheetrock"..."how to tape joints in sheetrock".... you get the picture....I hope...lol

[cas]

We have ridge vents but I'd have to remove the walls in the attic to get to them.

I wish it was popcorn, that stuff usually comes off easily. This stuff is must have been applied with gorilla glue or something, it doesn't even respond to water. :P Right now I'm applying some killz2 to the ceiling (I cleaned it off) to

I thought about having someone come in to hang it, finding someone has been a problem. The only reference I had was someone who didn't speak english and had no phone. We're not going there. :P

[propman]

"cas" wrote in news:1160328394.441075.172640 @i42g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

The ceiling may have been painted with an oil base paint (quite common in bathrooms/kitchens due to high moisture content) which would explain why the texture is impervious to water.

Haven't heard of "killz2" before but did a quick check on the net and it would appear to be a latex primer.....if I have my facts straight on this, my suggestion would be to check to see if it bonds OK with previous oilbased paint coats otherwise you may run into some flaking problems further on down the line.

LOL!!!

[cas]

It can handle oil based. Nice stuff so far, went on extremely smooth and the cracks I mentioned seem to have been filled in.

You think I kid. :) I can do downtown and hire someone w/o papers 7 days a week, I'd like to keep a fellow american employed if I can.