When performing repairs in the apartment, in no case should one neglect the preparatory work. Preparing the surface for a stretch ceiling will guarantee the quality and long service life of the canvas. Thanks to competently carried out work in the future, the canvas will not sag, condensation and other defects will not appear. Front stretch ceiling installation be sure to carry out work with electrical wiring, install doors and windows, process the base and level the walls. Consider all the stages of preparation in detail.
Advantages of stretch ceilings
Many apartment owners give their preference to stretch ceilings, refusing more traditional materials, since such structures have a number of advantages:
- They do not form cracks, as on whitewashed or painted ceilings. This primarily applies to new buildings that are subject to shrinkage.
- Stretch ceilings are highly durable. One square meter PVC stretch ceiling holds up to 200 liters of water. To remove moisture, it is simply drained and the canvas is cleaned.
- Provide complete fire safety.
- They do not turn yellow even after a long time.
- Due to the variety of design options, absolutely any design projects can be implemented.
How to prepare a room
First you need to take care of creating a comfortable space for work and protecting some elements.
- Before starting work, unnecessary items are removed from the room: furniture, appliances, paintings. The freer the room is, the faster the installation of the ceiling will take place, and the canvas is guaranteed not to be damaged.
- Furniture that cannot be taken out is moved to the middle of the room and covered with a protective film. If you plan to install a built-in wardrobe, it is better to do this before installing the stretch ceiling. A bar is placed on the cabinet, on which the canvas will be attached.
- Plastic window elements near the installation points must be covered with masking tape. When installing a stretch ceiling, the air near it heats up to 60 degrees, which can damage the plastic material.
Preparation of the basis for the stretch ceiling
The stretch ceiling is good because the labor-intensive and costly work on processing the floor slab, which can have serious defects and irregularities, is minimized.
Before installing the stretch fabric, the draft ceiling is not necessary:
- align;
- paint;
- bleach;
- putty.
What needs to be done to properly prepare the foundation? All necessary activities can be divided into three stages:
- Inspection of the joints of the ceiling with the walls and the elimination of irregularities that may interfere with the installation of the canvas.
- Eliminate base defects that can later lead to damage or sagging of your new ceiling. It is necessary to clean the rough surface of crumbling plaster or paint, check all unreliable areas: in those places where the plaster does not hold well, it is likely that sooner or later during the operation of the stretch ceiling it will fall off, damaging the canvas.
Particular attention should be paid to the seams between the slabs (rusts): they need to be expanded by cleaning out the remnants of the cement mortar from them, and repaired. Of course, a stretch ceiling will hide ugly seams, but heat can escape through the gaps between the floor slabs, moisture can seep in, if we are talking about an apartment on the top floor, therefore embedding and reinforcing rustications are still necessary.
- Surface priming (necessarily). The primer will strengthen the base material, reduce the risk of defects and fungus, and prevent dust from accumulating between the two canvases.
Stretch ceiling will save the apartment from flooding from the top floor.Although moisture is easily removed, an untreated board will become a breeding ground for mold as it dries.
Wiring preparation
Before carrying out the installation of a stretch ceiling, they are determined with the choice of fixtures for the room. All lighting elements must be purchased in advance, because the installation of wiring and fixtures for fixtures must be done before installing the canvas.
It will no longer be possible to change the location of the fixtures on the stretch ceiling, since it will be extremely difficult to disguise the holes cut out for them, and to install the lighting fixture in a new place, you will inevitably have to remove the canvas and then fix it again.
When thinking about lighting, consider the following rules:
- For a tension structure, you need to choose incandescent lamps with a power of not more than 60 W, since the material can be damaged by overheating. The best option would be energy-saving or LED lamps.
- It is important to correctly measure the distance from the lamp to the draft ceiling in order to calculate the height of the stretch fabric.
- After preparing the base, you need to mark the location of the light sources and bring the wiring to them.
- In order to avoid danger, before installation, it is imperative to check the serviceability of the electrical wiring.
You also need to decide on placement. ventilation and other systems that will be hidden after repair work. In the future, to access communications, it will be necessary to dismantle the canvas in several places.
Wall preparation
If the room has not yet been renovated, then you must first prepare the walls. For this purpose, from the surfaces remove old paint, wallpaper and level the surface. If you prepare the walls after installing the stretch ceiling, dirt and dust will settle on it during processing. In addition, the risk of damage to the web increases. Pasting the walls with wallpaper is best done after repair, so that when the profile is attached to the walls, the wallpaper does not get dirty and does not move away from the walls under the influence of hot air from the heat gun.
- To stick ordinary wallpaper, you can simply remove the old finish. If it is planned to apply liquid wallpaper or plaster, then it is necessary to completely clean the surface to brick or concrete. Screws and nails are removed at the same time.
- All irregularities on the walls are eliminated. Large cracks are treated with gypsum and several layers of plaster. Shallow cracks are sealed with a solution of cement and gypsum, taken in a ratio of 1: 3. Then a serpentine tape is glued to this area and puttied.
- Having eliminated the defects, they begin to putty the walls. This procedure is carried out in one direction, moving horizontally or vertically. To cover up cracks, the spatula is held at an angle of at least 30 degrees to the wall. The larger the angle to the wall, the smaller the layer thickness should be. The solution is periodically stirred with a spatula, which will not allow the mass to thicken. When the first layer dries, it is cleaned with an abrasive grater, and after a day - with fine-grained sandpaper.
- Then the surface is primed, which contributes to its hardening and removal of dust.
Plasterboard constructions, in which the tension web will be mounted, need to be adjusted. On the inside of such structures, a horizontal profile is installed, which will be 2–3 centimeters higher than the stretch ceiling.
How to mark up
The stretch fabric is attached to a plastic or aluminum profile, which is fixed with self-tapping dowels on the walls or the primary ceiling. Therefore, the last step in surface preparation will be marking. To carry it out, you need to determine the level at which the lowest point of the structure will be located.The minimum distance from the stretch ceiling to the base is 6 cm.
In the case of multi-level ceilings, markings are needed for each level with strict adherence to the geometry of the room. In this case, the distance from the draft surface will vary depending on the shape and number of layers of the structure.
Installation of tension structures does not require complex and lengthy preparation of the base ceiling. They are installed without problems even on an uneven surface with defects that will be masked after repair. But in order for your stretch ceiling to serve for a long time, minimal preparatory work is still necessary.
