We purchased a home recently and there is a lot of discoloration on the ceiling of the living room. Can someone tell me based on the photo below, if you can tell what would have caused these stains? The prior residents were chain smokers so I'm figuring that's in but I don't understand why the staining wouldn't be consistent. I had planned to just paint over them but wanted to run it by, hopefully someone with more stain experience that could tell me it's not some kind of water stain or mold before I did so. Could someone out there help me based on this photo? Thanks!
Best Answer
My grand parents smoked in there home for years, when my grandfather passed we painted the house so my grandmother could sell it, a long story short washing with tsp trisodium phosphate, and painting the brown tar made it through the paint 3x coated we ended up repainting with a schellac based sealer then repainting this finally solved the bleed through problem. You will want to seal the surface not just prime zinsser makes one that I have used since then many times with no bleed through.