Quick question that seems rife with debate when I use the googles...
Live in very humid zone (gulf coast US).
Bathroom (also typically humid).
Had several holes from very old water damage in ceiling above shower (former owners spackled over, forgot to paint, didn't notice until the last month when paint started pulling away from ceiling). Looks to be from a roof leak that is long repaired (we re-roofed completely 2 years ago anyway).
3-ish holes, through the drywall, near the wall, mostly under 3 inches in diameter.
Asked for and received a few quotes to cut out and repair: $225-$300 including retexturing ceiling/painting. Literally about a square foot of space.
Laughed my fucking ass off, and then looked up how to repair drywall holes myself. Did so. Cost me $15 in materials and about two hours total of fussing around.
Now confuzzled over priming, retexturing, and painting.
Ceiling has popcorn texture, with layer of oil-based paint. Dammit. So repaired area is now smooth, and scraped off the flaky bits of paint/texture to expose the raw drywall. Ended up with about 2 foot area of exposure. Bathroom itself is only 5 foot x 8 foot, so ceiling isn't huge.
Plan is to scrape the whole ceiling now and get all the #@!@ popcorn/paint off, and do a basic knockdown texture using regular drywall compound/mud, prime and then paint with latex paint (a moderately glossy eggshell finish in a very fancy-pants brand I already have most of the house's ceilings painted with).
But I'm reading - PRIMER BEFORE TEXTURE!!! OMG!!
and then I read: NO! PRIMER AFTER TEXTURE!! OMG!!
and then: OMG!!!(!) PRIME ALL THE THINGS! PRIMER FOR ALL! PRIME BEFORE TEXTURE AND AFTER!!!
Sigh.
So somebody with some experience please tell me: should I really prime the ceiling after scraping it and before texture? Or can I scrape, then wipe down, then texture it, then prime and paint?
I know I am going to need the surface as clean and dust/debris free as possible to start with, but is priming before texture really necessary for best adherence?