Bathroom Ceiling Paint Not Sticking

[Ian Avery]

Hi, my first post on here so please bear with me.
We are getting our house ready to sell and are going through a few choice rooms making them good before putting the house on the market.
Everything going swimmingly when a simple paint refresh over the bathroom ceiling start of December has revealed issues.
We have never decorated in there as it’s always been ok for us but it very much looks like the people who built it as part of an extension never sealed the ceiling plaster properly...
As I rolled top coats over it, the paint rolled off in chunks onto my roller. I scraped back the paint as much as I could, sanded it down, washed, mist coated and then in putting the first coat back on the sealing another part started to roll off elsewhere...
Move on 6 weeks and after a break for Xmas, there are now 6 more random patches that have been exposed.
So, before I go on any further, I need advice...
I feel I could be on this for ages as I really don’t know how bad the problem is. I had a thought this morning that I could abandon using a roller (and a good finish) and use a large brush instead which has a different action and chances are it won’t lift the paint off...
bottom line is, I need to get this done quite quickly now and can’t afford this dragging on forever...
Any advice would be hugely appreciated!
Ian

 

[Diyisfun]

You will need to remove all the flaking paint, mist coat & repaint, I dont think you will find another way.
Although ias you are only after a bodge, you might get away using a brush, hope they dont look up, distract them, drop something.

 

[Ian Avery]

Thanks for the reply... well the annoying thing is that 4 times now I’ve thought I’ve got it all and at one point took over a square metre off... thought I’d got it all... then after I’d prepped, coating it again, another area other side started to be affected...
I’m wondering if the whole ceiling needs taking back but it’s going to take an age to do that...
What about rotary sanding the lot back to the plaster and starting from scratch??

 

[Diyisfun]

Cant you scrape it, sanding will be messy.

 

[Ian Avery]

Yeah... constantly scraping. I think the frustration is that to look at the ceiling it looks ok... there is no flaking until I roller, the it comes off in almost 1-2 patches onto the roller back to the plaster... scrap off the obvious and then sand, repeat... then another section rolls off
Uploading a file of before Xmas...

 

[Ian Avery]

And this is now... after I’d sanded and painted... scraping again after the roller brought more off

you can see the lighter shadow where I’ve put a first coat over the mist from before xmas

 

[Diyisfun]

Ive had this problem myself, I just scape back till I reach a sound surface.

 

[Ian Avery]

Yeah... just when I think I’ve got it, I prep then start to pain and another bit pops up elsewhere... I’ll see what happens then post an update this time around. Thanks for your replies

 

[rcsdiy]

Hi Ian, I had exactly the same problem in the bathroom in our last house. It started to flake by itself, but when I tried to touch up the flaking areas whole chunks came off elsewhere. After a couple of iterations of that I gave up and scraped the entire ceiling, after rolling it with water first to loosen it up. Some areas seemed solid (corner furthest from the shower) and took a lot of scraping, so I left that part in the end. Lightly sanded some rough areas, mist coated bare plaster, and painted with bathroom paint - that did the trick, no more peeling paint! It was an extremely frustrating job, but actually once I'd accepted it all needed to come off it didn't take too long

Good luck!

 

[JohnD]

some people put glue on new plaster hoping it will make the paint stick, but it has the opposite effect.

 

[Ian Avery]

Hi all... after a week or so, got as much paint off and sanded back to make flush. Mist coat on with yet another few bits coming off but I hope I’ve caught them...

Thanks for all your help