Primer before or after? Both?

[Frankies Girl]

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?

[anotherAlias]

It's going to depend on how you do the texture.  When I patched my bathroom ceiling last year, I primed first and then used a spray texture that said it was self-priming, then painted.  I think the argument for priming after is when you do the knock down method with mud. FWIW, the spray texture was super easy and after a practice spray on a piece of junk cardboard, was a perfect match to the existing texture I had.  YMMV

[Frankies Girl]

Texture is going to be regular drywall joint compound. Thinned to pancake/brownie batter thickness, rolled on with paint roller, let it dry slightly and then stamp a light brush texture into it, then using a knockdown/smoother to get to a more orange peel texture.

I don't want a super obvious texture, just enough to cover any imperfections. And not be @#!# popcorn.

I looked at spray textures, but for the size of the room and all the required taping, drop cloths and cleanup, it would be super complicated and messier and more expensive than I think I want to handle.

Definitely plan on priming after texture is completely dry, and then painting with latex to finish.

Just wondering if I don't prime under the texture, am I risking failure of the paint/texture surface down the road?

[Rcc]

Wife and I went on a jihad with our #$&* popcorn ceilings a few years ago.

Due to travel and other obligations we had to hire out the painting etc. we didn’t go with a texture just white paint, etc.

With that said since your new texture will just be mud compound which is designed to stick to dry wall anyway, I can’t fathom why one would prime before putting it up. Or put another way, I’ve never seen any of the 2-3 contractors I’ve had into do drywall work prime except when the next layer will be paint.

Tell us how it goes. Pics 😀?

[lthenderson]

In situations with conflicting advice, I usually follow the directions on the product itself. In your case with drywall joint compound, you don't need to prime beforehand as it is made to stick well to drywall.

For an easier approach to texture, many hardware stores now sell pre-primed texture in rattle cans in various styles that work pretty well for a small room like a bathroom.

[Frankies Girl]

So just to update this, attempting to remove paint/popcorn was a wash. The area over the shower was loose enough to get it off pretty cleanly, but the rest of the room - like it was one with the drywall. I literally could have gouged it til the cows came home and it wasn't budging.

So stuck with popcorn unless I want to replace the entire ceiling, or sand it off which is a big hell no.

So new plan: cleaned ceiling (swept it off and then wiped down with slightly damp cloth) to remove all loose dust/whatever. Sanded the edges of the existing paint/texture to ease the blend line when I do the texture patch. Used premixed popcorn texture on smooth/repaired area of drywall. Let dry over 2 days. Just completed a primer/sealer (Zinsser) that is supposed to be guaranteed to prime over oil or latex based surfaces without prior sanding (says so right on the label so hope they're not liars).

Letting the primer dry over the next 24-48 hours (I have things to do) and then will come back and use some eggshell finish latex (sherwin williams premium paint I have on most the rest of the house's ceilings).

I personally can tell where the repair is just because the popcorn texture is a bit different than the existing popcorn, but I believe it would not be noticeable to anyone unless they specifically are looking for it. If it seems obvious after the primer dries, I might hit it again (the popcorn that was there is a bit more "clumpy" looking than the one I rolled up there).

Has cost me around $25 or so and a bit of time so far.

[Papa bear]

Did you wet down the ceiling before trying to scrape it off? My late 60's dad just removed the popcorn ceiling on an 1800sf ranch vacation home with water and some elbow grease.


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[Frankies Girl]

Did you wet down the ceiling before trying to scrape it off? My late 60's dad just removed the popcorn ceiling on an 1800sf ranch vacation home with water and some elbow grease.


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It wouldn't have helped much with old oil based paint being the main issue. I believe in cases where the surface was painted with a flat latex that allowed moisture permeability, wetting down and then scraping has merit, but not in this case. And considering I had a repair that would degrade if it continued to get wet, that wasn't a path I wanted to go down.

[Rcc]

Did you wet down the ceiling before trying to scrape it off? My late 60's dad just removed the popcorn ceiling on an 1800sf ranch vacation home with water and some elbow grease.


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It wouldn't have helped much with old oil based paint being the main issue. I believe in cases where the surface was painted with a flat latex that allowed moisture permeability, wetting down and then scraping has merit, but not in this case. And considering I had a repair that would degrade if it continued to get wet, that wasn't a path I wanted to go down.

Oof. Sorry to hear about that. Fortunately, our )*&^(*& popcorn wasnt painted over with oil-base, so bringing it down was childs play. Had it been painted with an oil base and or hard to scrape (we tested on some drywall scraps our plumbers cut out for the PEX repiping)... we would have switched gears too.

Glad its been cheap to figure that out.