Water-Damaged Drywall Repair in Phoenix

The leak comes first

Water on drywall comes from a few places, and each one has its own fix:

• Roof leaks show as ceiling stains after rain, often near a vent, a skylight or a valley. We can help with the roof too, and it gets fixed before we touch the ceiling.
• AC leaks show as ceiling stains in summer, under the air handler in the attic or along the drain line. We can help clear the AC drain too. Once it's cleared, we fix the ceiling.
• Plumbing leaks show as a wet wall behind a shower, under a sink, or on a ceiling under an upstairs bathroom. We fix small plumbing leaks, and we can help with leaks in the wall or slab too.
• Window and door leaks after a monsoon show as a soft spot under a window or at the bottom of a wall. Those are sealant and flashing problems, and we fix them.

We'll help you figure out which one it is. A stain that's dry, hard and not growing is from a leak that's already stopped. One that's damp, soft or spreading is live.

Dry stain, firm drywall

If the drywall is dry and firm, the stain is just a stain. It gets sealed with a stain-blocking primer so it doesn't bleed back through the new paint, then painted. Without that primer, the brown comes through two coats of paint.

Soft, sagging or crumbling drywall

Drywall that's soft, bowed, crumbling or stained dark has lost its strength and gets cut out. The cut goes back to the nearest framing on each side and a little beyond the visible damage, because drywall wicks water past where the stain shows. If the insulation behind it got wet, that comes out too, because wet insulation holds moisture against the framing. Then the cavity dries, new drywall goes in, and it's taped, finished, textured and primed.

Anything showing mold gets cut out, not covered. If the mold covers a large area, or the framing behind it is affected, that's beyond a drywall repair.

Ceilings

A sagging ceiling is wet drywall that's lost its grip on the screws. It can come down, and a wet ceiling panel is heavy. If a ceiling is sagging, stay out from under it and put a bucket under the low spot. We cut the wet section out, dry the cavity, and replace it. Ceiling patches get screwed to the joists and finished with a bit more care than a wall, because the light across a ceiling shows every bump.

Behind showers and tubs

A wet wall on the other side of a shower is often the shower itself: failed grout, caulk or waterproofing behind the tile. A small fix can sometimes stop it. If the shower wall has gone soft, rebuilding it is a bathroom remodel, which we also do. The drywall on the dry side gets repaired after the shower is fixed, not before.

Problems we fix on this page

• Water stain on the ceiling
• Water stain on the wall
• Soft spot in the drywall
• Ceiling sagging after a leak
• Drywall crumbling at the bottom near the floor
• Stain keeps coming back through the paint

How it starts

Send a photo of the damage and tell us when it happened and whether it's still wet. If you know where the water came from, say so. We send back a fixed price, you say go, and Levi shows up to do it. If the leak is still live, the quote says what has to happen first.