My Ceiling Is Sagging...
I’ve lived in South Slope in an old apartment that I love since 2006. I have no idea how old this place is, but I do have wide beam hardwood floors that slope down from the kitchen. That’s not my big concern. My big concern is the ever increasing cracks in my ceiling from the…
I’ve lived in South Slope in an old apartment that I love since 2006. I have no idea how old this place is, but I do have wide beam hardwood floors that slope down from the kitchen. That’s not my big concern. My big concern is the ever increasing cracks in my ceiling from the apartment above. Did I mention they are a rock band with an ass load of guitars, drums, and amps up there. Well they are. And their shit is heavy and I fear it will be collapsing onto my head in the near future. So what should I do? My landlord is a nice enough guy. But he is a tear down/build up kind of guy, and the only reason my place exists is that the family owned buildings that connect on either side of me refuse to sell to him. I fear my whole place is sinking and that I will be forced to move. What should I do?
Well to me if they do good work he is taking advantage of them, this type of skill is something to be valued not sold out to the most desperate worker. $80 a day maybe for an unskilled laborer.
I take it back. Your landlord can get the whole thing done by his regular handyman for $300. It will be slightly lumpy, but it will hold up.
If you want a perfectly smooth and level ceiling, it will cost more.
$80 a day is what your Staten Island contractor pays to his Spanish speaking subs. They can skim coat and paint very beautifully, but will charge more if their ability includes perfect ceilings.
Mopar, $80 a day for a good plasterer is a total insult. 80 a day for skilled labor of any sort is an insult. I would be careful of any skilled person willing to work for 80 a day.
VERY DANGEROUS! If your landlord is really cheap, he can have someone knock down the sagging portion of the ceiling and replace only that portion with a sheet rock patch. It wouldn’t look great (although it would look better than the existing crack and bulge), but it’d be safe. I once had a portion of a ceiling fall and almost hit me. Even though I was lucky, it’s not something I’d care to repeat.
Totally agree with the above. When we first moved into this place, we were too dumb to realize the significance of the bulging plaster ceiling over the kitchen. One night, about 2 minutes after I walked out of the kitchen, there was an enormous, thunderous crash. The entire plaster ceiling — a full foot thick from years and years of slapdash repairs — had come down. There was nobody above us jumping up and down — it came down all on its own. If I had been in the kitchen when it did, I wouldn’t be writing this today. Tell your landlord to get the ceiling fixed pronto.
This is something to act on quickly.
Our dining room plaster ceiling came down on us while we were eating, it was an area about 6′-x 7′ and we were seriously lucky not to be injured. We heard unusual creaking, got up from the table just in time before it landed on our dinner and chairs and on the turtles in the adjacent tank (it’s a good thing they have shells).
THe landlord should be able to deal with it since if you get inured as a result it will be another kind of headache for him.It can also be an opportunity to soundproof the ceiling if he puts up a new one, which he should do.
We tore down all of it reframed it and put up a sheetrock ceiling with sound proofing, new light fixtures etc…it worked out.
Ditto. In my old place, I came home to find fifty pounds of century-old, horsehair-filled plaster had fallen onto my PILLOW. It’s no joke.
OP, you’re not clear if your ceiling is plaster or drywall. From your description it sounds like it’s plaster. If that is the case, let me add my recommendation to the others’ – get this dealt with NOW. A falling plaster ceiling can kill you.
In this case, you may actually want your landlord to tear it down. If the ceiling isn’t too far gone, he can shore it up with plaster buttons (they have them at Leopoldi’s Hardware but can be hard to fine elsewhere) and skimcoat it. But if it’s really cracking badly, it’s better to take it down than to shore it up insufficiently.
I agree, falling plaster can be dangerous and can happen quite suddenly. We found bits of plaster in my daughters bed one night as she went to bed. I thought it might be undissolved detergent, it was that small. Then we saw the widening crack above it her bed. We moved her out of the room and the next morning 30% of the ceiling fell down. No one running up the stairs, just of its own accord. And it would have seriously hurt someone underneath. I would not waste time in talking to your landlord and moving your belongings away from the area.