Ceiling and drywall water damage shows up as a brown ring, a sagging bubble in the paint or drywall tape starting to lift. By the time you see it, water has soaked through the paper face and gypsum core, and there may be more sitting on top.
If the ceiling is sagging, do not poke it with a broom handle while standing under it. Put a bucket down, move furniture out of the way and call us. A sagging ceiling holding water can let go all at once.
Our crew finds the source first: an upstairs toilet, a shower pan, a supply line in the ceiling, a roof leak or an ice dam. Then we check how far the water spread with a moisture meter and thermal camera. Water runs along ceiling joists and ends up far from where it started. Drywall that got wet once and dried fast can sometimes stay. Drywall that sagged, crumbled or stayed wet more than a couple of days gets cut out, along with the wet insulation above it. Blown-in cellulose in a ceiling acts like a sponge and has to go.
After structural drying, we patch or replace the drywall, then tape, texture and prime. Utah County homes use a lot of knockdown and orange peel texture, and matching it is what makes a repair disappear.
For a stain on a top-floor ceiling under the attic, also look at attic mold removal. Leak coming from the apartment upstairs? See leak detection and drying. Call (385) 853-1062.