Can I Replace the Ceiling Panels in a Mobile Home Without Removing the Cabinets?

When to Remove Cabinets

• Mobile homes, manufactured homes, house trailers and RVs are assembled sequentially, so they must be disassembled in the opposite order. Typically, the manufacturer’s sequence is to build the framing, apply the exterior skin, then install insulation. After this, the interiors are assembled, pipes and wires are installed and ceilings are fitted. Walls are put in and decorated, then overhead cabinets are attached. This means that cabinets must be removed first, before attempting to entirely replace ceiling panels.

Why Ceilings Are Installed Before Walls

• Beyond ease of installation, which translates to a reduced cost for the manufacturer, the construction sequence serves a purpose. Older mobile homes -- especially those that have been moved a time or two -- seldom have square rooms. Anticipating this, manufacturers typically fit ceiling panels that protrude an inch or two out of the room, above the wall, into the insulated void between the inner and outer skins. This prevents gaps in corners. The experts at Mobile Home Doctor recommend replacement be carried out in the same way.

Rooms Where Damage Doesn't Extend to the Walls

• Partial replacement of bowed ceilings is not recommended. It is tempting to leave cabinets in place and repair only the “bellied” areas when visible damage is confined to the center of ceilings. In these circumstances you don't need to replace the material to the edges of the rooms for appearance, but you can't fully inspect the above-ceiling void to learn the cause of the damage -- most likely water incursion -- without complete removal, so the initial problems will probably deteriorate the new material quite quickly. Further, the process of re-skinning lowers the ceiling height, which is not usually generous to start with.

  To replace a patch rather than an entire panel requires many skills for a faultless finish: Installing sheetrock, covering the fasteners, taping, bedding the tape, finishing the joints -- properly called the “marriage lines” -- and re-texturing. The latter is an issue in itself, as the acoustical material sprayed onto the original ceiling is, for all practical purposes, impossible to replicate. To finish the job with ceilings that have a consistent texture throughout individual rooms and the entire mobile home, you'll need to scrape off the sound material and apply a new coating. That said, the 4-by-14-foot lightweight panels manufactured to replace ceilings with 16-inch joists are supplied pre-textured, and the match to preexisting ceiling panels is likely to be adequate.

Follow-up Projects

• The particle board typically used to manufacture mobile homes is extremely vulnerable to de-particulation; it can separate and feel “soft” underfoot, as if rotted, after only one soaking. Check the walls and floors beneath and adjacent to any ceiling damage for follow-up projects.