I painted my place a couple of years ago but I am not known for my careful painting skills. The fact that the ceilings are white textured plaster didn’t help matters either. No masking tape would stick well enough to prevent paint overruns past the edges and again, I am sloppy in general so there are a few places where I accidentally hit the brush on the ceiling and left a brush sized splotch. The problem is that it isn’t isolated. The problem is on the ceiling edge in every room ranging from about 1/4" to much more with bigger splotches wherever I made an even worse mistake.
Is there a decent way to fix this. I could use a hand scraper in theory and have even done that in places but that removes too much ceiling material and takes too long for the size involved.
I think I could use a Dremel type tool with a small wire wheel or grinding edge to carefully go around the edges to remove just enough plaster to get rid of the paint but I am not sure how well that will really work. Has anyone found a relatively efficient way to correct painting mistakes like this?
Buy a gallon of paint that matches the ceiling, and put a tape line about one quarter inch down on the wall from the ceiling. Paint the ceiling paint down to that line. It’s the only way I know of to get a straight line with the textured ceiling, and it is not noticeable.
Cool trick! I would have to see a room done up in the quarter-inch-stripe technique in order to commit, but sounds neat.
I normally just end up going back and forth with smaller amounts of touch up paint and more finesse, fixing the big blotches on the ceiling, then fixing the sparser bits of white on the wall, then fixing the smaller bits of wall paint that got on the ceiling while I was touching up the wall, then … until I’m tired of it.
Thanks for the recommendation. That one has the beauty of not creating any dust too which was another big worry. I am not a perfectionist by any stretch. The paint looks pretty good when standing up but the splotches I created are really noticeable when I am laying on a bed or or the couch and look up. I think I will try your suggestion on a small stretch. The only concern is that the ceiling isn’t new and there are about a bazillion different subtle shades of white. I might have to do some matching work with small samples.
It’s too late for you now to remove the paint. Any abrasion would also remove the paint underneath the paint you want to remove. It’s time for you to take the opportunity to repaint the whole ceiling. As an alternative to using masking tape, you could get a rectangular plastic or steel plate and hold that against the wall when you paint up to it.
If it’s only the odd touch-up here and there you won’t see any difference in the ceiling paint colour. Just get flat ceiling paint and a small brush and dab the paint on. I’ve done it plenty of times.
Get a quart of flat white paint. Get a small set of craft paint/artists’ acrylics. Use the latter to tint the former (in small batches, in a yogurt cup or something) till you get it close enough. Adding black to the white will probably not get you there. Try brown or blue or both to tint. Get a bag of sponge brushes to stipple on your touch up paint over the texture, they work great and you can just toss 'em.
I actually have gotten the local Ace hardware guy to give me the awesome paint tints from the mixing machine for free, as long as I supplied the containers (I had some old cough syrup bottles), but then I was in there on a weekly basis buying out the store. Acrylic paint will work just fine; it’s just not as concentrated. The substrate is close enough to latex that it will blend with no problem.
When I paint a room, I take the ceiling paint and cover the corners where the wall meets the ceiling a few inches down the wall and a few inches onto the ceiling. The I roll the the ceiling twice…the cutting in has already been done there.
Next load an edging tool with wall paint and use it to create a sharp 1/4 inch gap between the wall paint and ceiling paint that is on the wall. I use a tool, but my painter buddies do it free hand. There are never splotches on the ceiling, and usually any imperfections are rarely noticeable because you are looking up, which tends to minimize errors on the high part of the wall, unlike errors on the ceiling, which are immediately seen.
Valspar and KILZ both make color change ceiling paint - goes on pink or purple, turns white when it dries. I recommend it (I’ve used the KILZ version because it contains primer). It’s far easier than white ceiling paint that goes on white; I wish I’d not attempted the white only version first. If you paint the ceiling it’ll look a lot less obvious than trying to paint over your boo boos as a spot job.
I’ve certainly used it enough times. :smack: