About Iedafrica

The Crew That Asks How Old the House Is

Iedafrica works on ceilings in Long Beach. We are based on Long Beach Blvd in the 90802 ZIP, and the first thing we ask on the phone is not what color you want. It is the year the house went up.

That is because most of the textured ceilings we get called about are older than the questions people ask about them. Sprayed acoustic texture, the popcorn finish, went onto ceilings across Southern California for decades, and some of the material made before the late nineteen seventies contained asbestos. You cannot see it, you cannot feel it, and no painter can identify it from a photograph. A laboratory can, from a sample the size of a coin.

What We Do and What We Do Not

We collect the sample, we send it, and we give you the report as it arrives. If it is negative we take the ceiling off wet, skim it flat, prime it and paint it. If it is positive we stop, and the removal goes to an abatement contractor who is set up for that work. We are a painting crew. We do the part before the removal and the part after it, and we would rather say that out loud than quote a scrape and sort it out later.

The Houses Here

Long Beach gives us three broad kinds of ceiling. The nineteen twenties and thirties bungalows in Belmont Heights, Rose Park and Bixby Knolls usually have lath and plaster overhead, often skim coated or boarded over at some point by somebody in a hurry. The post-war stucco tract homes further east are the classic popcorn candidates, sprayed as standard and untouched since. The mid-century flat roof houses are their own case, because a flat roof that has leaked once has almost always leaked twice, and the ceiling tells you where.

On Dust and Living Through It

Ceiling work is the messiest thing that happens inside a house. Everything falls, and it falls on all of it. So the room is emptied or sheeted, floors are covered and taped at the edges, fixtures come down and get bagged, and walls are papered up to the line. Removal is done wet because dry scraping puts a fog of fine particles through a whole home for no benefit whatsoever, and sanding compound is done on vacuum extraction.

We clean up at the end of each day rather than at the end of the job. You should be able to use the rest of the house the whole time.

When We Tell People Not to Spend

Plenty of textured ceilings are fine. If it is intact, not stained, and you are only bothered by it because someone told you it was dated, sealing and repainting it costs a fraction of removal and takes a day instead of a week. There is also a decent argument for leaving old material undisturbed rather than opening it up. We will make that argument when it applies, quote both ways, and let you pick.

Call (562) 981-8366.