About Manchester Wall & Ceiling Repair

Manchester Wall & Ceiling Repair is a small drywall and plaster outfit working in Manchester and the towns around it. Most of what we do is repair rather than new construction: ceilings that have taken water, plaster that has let go of its lath, cracks that reopen every winter, and the ordinary holes a house collects.

This page is not a company history. It is the standard we hold a repair to, so you can measure ours — or anyone else's — against it.

The standard we hold a repair to

• Flat under a light held against the wall, not just flat head-on
• Texture matched close enough that you stop looking for the join
• Joints taped, never filled and hoped over
• Plaster re-secured to lath where the lath is sound, replaced where it is not
• Cause identified in writing before the surface is closed
• Dust contained at the sander and the room left usable

What a finished repair should look like

Hold a work lamp flat against the wall so the light travels across the surface rather than at it. Every flaw a repair can have shows up in that light: a ridge where the compound stopped, a shallow dish over a seam, sanding scratches, a texture patch that sits proud of the wall around it. A repair that passes that test will disappear under any normal lighting for the life of the room. One that fails it looks fine on the day and announces itself the first sunny afternoon in March.

Why the cause goes on the estimate

A ceiling stain is not a repair item, it is evidence. Written on our estimates you will find what we think caused the damage — ice at the eave, a supply line that let go, a decades-old roof leak that has already been fixed — and what we recommend doing about it. Sometimes the honest answer is that the drywall is the cheap part of the problem and the money belongs in the attic instead. It is a slower way to sell work and a much better way to keep customers.

Scheduling in a New England winter

Ceiling damage peaks between January and March, which is exactly when it is least convenient to be opening ceilings. We do it anyway, because wet insulation compresses and stops working and a stain left until spring is a bigger repair by then. The one thing we decline is sealing a ceiling while ice is still forming on the roof above it; that work gets staged so the cause is handled first.