Greater Lansing
Drywall & ceiling repair
25 people have asked for drywall repair and 17 drywall jobs are on eleven months of invoices. Here is what the work is, what decides the price, and the honest answer about when a patch is going to show.
What is actually wrong
Most drywall work is one of four things. A hole, from a door handle, a foot, a leaking pipe somebody went looking for, or furniture on a stairwell. A crack, usually at a corner bead or above a door frame, which is either seasonal movement that will come back or settlement that will not. Nail pops down a whole wall, which is the board no longer being held tight to the stud. Or water damage, where the board itself has failed and patching over it is decoration rather than repair.
The fourth one is the common one here. Across eleven months of invoices, the drywall work this company is paid for is overwhelmingly downstream of water: a ceiling under a bathroom, a wall behind a failed supply line, a basement that took water in a storm. The drywall is the second job on that list and the leak is the first, and doing them in the other order means doing the drywall twice.
The honest bit, which most trade websites leave out: a patch is not always invisible and anybody who promises it always is has not seen your wall. A patch in flat matte paint on a wall with no raking light disappears completely. A patch in satin or gloss, in a wall that a window rakes across in the afternoon, or in an orange-peel or knockdown texture that somebody else sprayed in a different decade, will be findable if you go looking for it. The way to make it genuinely disappear is to finish out to the nearest natural break — corner to corner, or the whole ceiling — and that is a bigger job with a bigger number on it. You get told which one you are buying before you buy it.
Where this stops
When it is not a handyman job
This is at the top of the page rather than the bottom because getting it wrong costs you a wasted visit. Insured, and no contractor licence is claimed or implied — the Michigan residential builder licence is not held.
- Mold: inspection and surface treatment only. Remediation is referred to a licensed specialist, and that is this company’s own wording on its own invoices rather than a website hedge.
- A wall or a ceiling that is still wet does not get closed. If moisture readings show damp, the work is rescheduled and no materials go in until it is dry — and there is no charge for the return visit.
- Textured ceilings in older houses can contain asbestos. Removal of anything suspected is licensed abatement work and is arranged separately; it is not taken on here.
- A ceiling sagging because a joist or a bearing has failed is a structural job and not a drywall one. It gets looked at, it gets said out loud, and it gets referred.
The work itself
What actually gets done
Hole and crack patching, taped, floated and sanded ready for paint.
Water-damaged ceiling and wall tear-out and replacement, once the cause is fixed and the cavity is dry.
Texture matching and skim coating, including knockdown and orange peel.
Full ceiling overlay where a ceiling has too many repairs in it to be worth patching again.
Drop-ceiling tile and grid replacement.
Refastening a wall that is popping, rather than filling the pops and watching them come back through the paint.
This work sits inside General Repairs, which carries the invoiced price bands for the trade with the sample size printed beside every figure.
What it costs
There is no price list for this, and here is what actually decides the number.
The same three words describe a twenty-minute job and a two-day one. Rather than publish a figure that is wrong for one of them, here is what moves it — so you can work out roughly which end of it you are at before anybody comes out.
How many patches and how big. Six small ones in one room is a different day from one large one across a ceiling.
Whether the finish has to be matched, and to what. Flat paint on a smooth wall is the easy end; matching a sprayed texture that was applied by somebody else, years ago, is skill and time and sometimes several attempts.
Whether the board is wet. Nothing gets closed up until moisture readings say the cavity is dry — that is a rule here, not a preference, and it can put a drying gap in the middle of the job.
Coats and drying time. Compound goes on in stages with sanding between, and no amount of wanting it finished on Tuesday changes how long the second coat takes.
Where it stops. Painting to the nearest natural break costs more than painting the patch and is the only way some repairs actually disappear.
Access and height. A hallway wall is a step ladder. A two-storey stairwell ceiling is scaffolding, and scaffolding is a line on the quote.
How to get a real number
Somebody comes out, looks at it properly, and you get a fixed price in writing with the work set out line by line and the exclusions written down as plainly as the inclusions. Coming out to do that is not charged for, and neither is working out what is wrong. If something is found once a wall or a floor is open, it is priced as a written change order and you decide before the work carries on rather than after it is billed. Materials are supplied at cost with the receipt attached, first-time customers get 10% off labour, and labour carries a one-year craftsmanship warranty.
If this is happening right now
What to do in the next five minutes, and what happens when you ring.
Before anybody arrives
- Find the water before you book the drywall. A stain that is still growing, or board that is soft when you press it, means the leak is live and a patch over it is money spent twice.
- Photograph it now, and photograph it wide enough to show the whole wall or ceiling. Most of what decides the price is the surface around the damage, not the damage.
- Do not paint over a water stain to see if it comes back. It will, it will come back through the new paint, and the stain block then has to go over both.
- If a ceiling is sagging or holding water, put a bucket under it, keep people out from underneath, and say so when you call — that one is treated differently from a scuff.
Call the business line
(517) 505-7135Answered Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 18:00. There is no out-of-hours line and this page is not going to invent one — outside those hours, leave a message with the address and what is happening, and it is picked up in the morning.
On the call you get asked what is happening, what else in the building is affected, and whether it is still getting worse. That is how it gets decided whether this is our job at all — and if it is not, you get told that on the phone rather than after somebody has driven out.
- No trip charge
- No call-out fee or minimum
- No diagnostic fee
- No charge for a return visit
True across all 84 written quotes this company has issued. Most contractors in this market charge to turn up.
Or send the detailsWhen the right answer is not this company
- You can smell gas
- Leave the building and call the utility from outside. Not us, and not later.
- Water you cannot stop
- Your main shut-off first, then a licensed plumber. Every minute of this one costs money.
- Sewage backing up, or several fixtures at once
- A licensed plumber with a camera. That is the shared line, not a fixture, and a cable down one sink will not touch it.
- Sparking, scorching or a burning smell at an outlet or a panel
- Breaker off, and a licensed electrician. Electrical work here is repair and like-for-like replacement, and this is neither.
- No heat, or heating and cooling equipment that has failed
- A licensed mechanical contractor. That trade is not offered here at all, and knowing that in one phone call is worth more than a visit.
Where this is being asked for
3 towns have enough behind them for a page of their own.
This work is done everywhere on the coverage list. These are the towns where the enquiry record and the job record both have something specific to say, so they get a page that says it. The rest do not, because a page with nothing true on it is worse than no page.
Drywall & ceiling repair in Lansing
11 Lansing addresses have asked for drywall repair, and every drywall job on the Lansing record arrived behind water.
Drywall & ceiling repair in East Lansing
Five East Lansing addresses have asked for drywall repair, in the town where the interior damage is usually the smaller half of the job.
Drywall & ceiling repair in Haslett
The one drywall job completed in this town was a ceiling, a corroded waste line, and two apartments — and every drywall enquiry since has been water too.
Questions people actually ask
Will the patch show?
Sometimes, and you are told which before the work starts rather than after. A patch in flat matte paint on a wall with no strong side light will not show. A patch in satin or gloss, on a wall a window rakes across, or in a sprayed texture applied by somebody else years ago, can be findable if you look for it. Where that matters, the fix is to finish out to the nearest natural break — corner to corner, or the whole ceiling — which costs more and is the only version that genuinely disappears.
Can you match my ceiling texture?
Usually. Knockdown, orange peel and skim finishes are all matched here, and it is done by making a sample and comparing it in the room’s own light rather than by eye out of the bucket. What cannot be promised is an invisible join in a texture with a heavy, distinctive pattern, and where that is the case the honest option is overlaying the whole ceiling instead.
My ceiling is stained from a leak upstairs. Do I fix the leak first?
Yes, and this is the single most common sequence error in this work. Board that is still damp will not hold compound, the stain will come back through fresh paint, and mold grows in a cavity that gets closed wet. The leak is found and stopped first, the cavity is left to dry, moisture readings decide when it is ready, and only then does the board go back. If that means two visits, the second one is not charged as a call-out.
Do you paint after the repair?
Yes, and it is quoted as part of the job rather than left for you to arrange. Painting is priced by where the paint stops — the patch, the wall, or the room — and the choice is yours once you have seen what each one gets you. Materials are supplied at cost with the receipt attached.
Got one of these?
Send the details and somebody will come and look. No trip charge, no call-out minimum, and a fixed price in writing before anything starts.