Painted fabric on ceiling(?)

20 years ago

We are working in the bathroom of our 1916 bungalow. We removed some built-in shelving and as a result have exposed a foot-wide and room-long strip of bare ceiling. The rest of the ceiling was covered by something that looked like painted burlap. My husband really likes the look--we just looked at paintable wall/ceiling paper in the store and it's just not the same thing. First of all, this had only one seam so it was basically 4-1/2 feet wide by 5 feet or more, as opposed to rolls of 20-1/2 inches wide. Is there a technique to cover the ceiling with fabric and paint it, or was this some kind of standard old wallcovering? I don't believe this is as old as the house since there are 3 layers of paint underneath it.

Has anyone else had this?

P.S. I've done tons of reading today about rewiring in lath & plaster (sigh). I was hoping the ceiling wouldn't be a challenge too.

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Comments (4)

maddiemom6
20 years ago
It is fabric that is made to resuce a crumbling plaster ceiling ( or walls).. there is a name for it but I am totally blanking on it.. Scrim?????.. sort of like heavy gauze?..

Maddie
elljays
20 years ago
We have a fabric-like wallpaper on the ceilings of our 1939 home. It's painted too. Ours isn't like a burlap though, it's a pretty fine weave. I only realized it when I was stripping wallpaper in the stairwell, and found an overlap of the ceiling paper that came down onto the walls. It can tear like fabric, along a thread. I think it was commonly used over plaster ceilings, maybe to camouflage hairline cracks? Ours is not like a gauze or cheesecloth which is used to repair plaster...we had that too on some of our walls. This is actually a wallpaper but it has a fabric-like weave. The texture does not show on ours...you only realize it's fabric when you cut into it. Ours looks just like a plaster or drywall ceiling.
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vjrnts
20 years ago
My 1922 Colonial Revival has canvas on the ceiling of the living room. It is beginning to separate from the plaster ceiling along the edges; we will have a repair to do, but I hope not too soon.

My painter, who showed me what was going on, told me that this is fairly common in houses this age, and was sometimes applied just to make a nice, smooth surface, and sometimes was applied so that decorative painting (think the Sistine Chapel *g*) could be done.
joandaugh
Original Author
20 years ago
Looking closer, it almost looks like it was paper with large stringy fibers, in a loose weave that is more uneven like burlap than fine like linen. But I was wondering if a current day fabric could be painted up there. I could scrape all the paint off and just paint, although it looks like there's no top coat of plaster, only the gray sandy scratch coat underneath the paint. The plaster ceiling is not in bad shape underneath so I do think it was partly done for effect. There is a little very old water damage above the toilet, but that's another story : ( Now we're reading all about replacing sections of the cast iron vent stack.

There was molding around the edge of the ceiling so I suppose if it would have even thought about peeling off at the edges, the molding held it pretty firm.