Popcorn Ceiling Removal

> I can just imagine how much cooking steam and pee
> vapors have been absorbed into those curds

Dude, that is just gross. Seriously though, you forgot to mention poopoo vapors.

Whatever you do with your ceilings/floors/walls/cabinets, somebody (new home owner or renter) will come along in 40-50 years and say “WTF is this crap, these people must have been insane!”. Guaranteed.

Actually Ray, we’ve found that “flowery wallpaper” is much more difficult to tackle than scraping popcorn. We’ve heard all the tips and tricks: use a scorer, fabric softener and/or detergent to loosen the glue…it’s still a pain in the butt. Amy’s been working on de-wallpapering the bathroom during this last week before school started.

We definitely had to use a ladder to work on the popcorn. In all of the pictures where we’re close the the ceiling, we’re on a ladder…which is where the marks on Amy’s legs came from. The aluminum on the ladder seems to rub off on you when it gets wet.

As far as the living room ceiling goes… We really want to remove the popcorn there too, but I’m sure we’re going to need to rent some scaffolding to get up that high. I wonder how much THAT is going to cost.

Hey jason, i’m scraping the popcorn off my kitchen ceiling at this very moment! What about the areas with lots of tape and joint compound (like your guest room)? How did you prepare those thick areas for painting?

thanks, mary

Hi Jason, I found you on google (cool) when I typed in ‘Popcorn Ceiling Orlando’. I just bought a house in Orlando and need to get that stuff off of the ceilings! My husband is trying to talk me into doing it ourselves, so I sent him your story. I will let you know who we hire!:) Thanks for sharing!

I found a lot of good info. on this site! Thanks! I do have a question for you though. Some of the other sites I visited talked about the “popcorn” spray having asbestos in it. Did you guys send some of yours off to have it tested?

I did talk about asbestos testing. It’s the third paragraph in italics. To answer your questions, we didn’t have our ceilings tested. Our house was built around the time those materials were banned, so we took the risk of assuming we would be OK to remove it ourselves. I do not recommend assuming anything but the worst. Hypocritically speaking, get it tested.

George: That’s interesting about doing a knockdown over the popcorn. After all the work we did in our guest bedroom, we may end up doing a knockdown texture over the ceiling there because it’s still not as smooth as we’d like it to be.

Shop-Vac Scraper Trick

My hubby and I just removed that ‘Oh so great late night snack’ from the celings in our old master bedroom, the hallway and living/dining rooms. Here’s a tip for you crafty people out there: we jerry-rigged (sp?) our shop vac by taping the scraper to the handle of a long shop broom, then taped that to the straight tube piece of the vac with the attatchment creating an “instant” cleanup when removing the popcorn. No need for a ladder on regular celing height and no dust! We had virtually no mess on the floor and did the whole project in 1/2 the time. Next up… get rid of that wallpaper from the late 70’s. Thanks for the water/vinegar tip – we’re going to try it.

Scraping Alternatives

Hi, this is an update to my 8/29/05 post, where I talked about putting joint compound over existing popcorn and creating a knockdown effect next. I wanted to provide some more info on my experience to help you decide if this is the route you should go:

The Good:
– works well on painted popcorn that’s stuck tight to the ceiling (and is really tough to remove by scraping). Popcorn like this should provide a terrific bond for the the joint compound if the popcorn is not flaky. I’ve seen popcorn that was like little styrofoam balls loosley attached to the ceiling — I can’t see any alternative to scraping this stuff off.
-fewer steps than the traditional wettin/scraping method: apply liberal amounts of joint compound with trowel to cover popcorn, use a clean hock (the wood or metal square thing that holds joint compound, similar to an artist palette), press it against the ceiling and pull it back off. The suction of the hock against the ceiling results in a texture like tiny icicles or stalactites. Using a wide taping knife, held almost parallel to the ceiling gently “knock down” the wet joint compound. If you mess up, just repeat until you get the texture you want.

The Bad:
– This process could be rather tedious on large rooms. I started on a hallway, and thought “no problem – I can do the whole house like this.” Maybe not…takes a lot of effort to fill in all the low spots in the popcorn. If you’re not careful, you get swiss cheese that requires filling later.

The Ugly: The joint compound wets the underlying popcorn. Too much wetting and manipulation of the compound can cause “pop-outs” where silver dollar sized areas of the popcorn will come loose, requiring filling and some foul language. So…be careful esp. if the popocorn is flaky to begin with.

The Alternative: Since then, I bought one of those $45 texturing guns and a gallon of premixed compound from the “orange” store that hooks up to a compressor or HVLP sprayer, like I already have. I did this to see if I was really saving any effort so I went to work in the master br closet: mask the walls, cover the floor, wet the ceiling, scrape, prime, spray with texture mat’l, knockdown with wide blade, prime again, final paint & cleanup. Obviously, no picnic either. The result was nice, but a little plainer than my hallway method. I have another large closet where I can experiment with my original method again.

Recommendation: Try this method in a closet or small hallway first. You can achive very interesting, hand-crafted textures. I hope this info helps.

I have just finished painting 5 rooms of popcorn. This house was built in 1985.I have learned the hard way. I should have primed the ceilings first but I didn’t. I just rolled the paint on pretty heavy and luckly 3 rooms are fine but the other 2 which is the larger 2 are a mess. It looks like it’s all going to fall off the ceiling. What can I do to touch up this mess?

I scraped the popcorn off of one room and became discouraged with the condition of the drywall underneath. We will be depopcorning the whole house in one week due to the installation of our new wood floors and it will be near impossible to wet,scrape,spackle/joint compound,sand and then paint an ENTIRE house in one week. So, I had an idea. Why not skip directly to sanding? I tried and it works great! I sand the popcorn with a course grit pole sander and then go over with fine grit sander and what a time saver. Some people might not find it perfectly smooth, but its close enouph! Just be sure to sand evenly! I hope this helps someone else!

I can not tell you how glad I was to find this “popcorn ceiling support group”!!! LOL 🙂 I went through the nighmare of trying to roll paint on my popcorn ceiling – only to have it fall off in big wet clumps — what a mess!!!

Now that I have it all scraped off and the ceiling primed — I don’t want to have just a plain smooth ceiling. I have searched the net high and low and can not find any instructions for the easiest ways (and products to use) to put a slight texture on the ceiling. Is there anything I can just “roll on” without having to be a masonary?? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

O.K. everyone- I have a question. I recently knocked down all drywall in my bathroom for remodel and have installed new drywall. I have access to a compressor and a texture sprayer.

Now the question. In my bedroom, would it be easier just to knock down the drywall ceiling (popcorn, drywall, and all), install new drywall, then tape/mud/texture/paint??

In my bathroom, I used a leaf blower in the attic crawl space to blow all insuallation away from the ceiling area, and then kicked the ceiling down from above. I would do the same for the bedroom. I can knock the ceiling down and have new drywall up in a day, ready to tape and mud.

I never removed popcorn before, and our popcorn is painted over, which I understand would make it more difficlut to remove. I thought I would ask the “experts” their opinion.

Thanks!
Greg H

Everybody talks about drywall, but my place was built in 1920. Some previous owner sprayed popcorn all over the place – probably directly on the plaster. If I wet down the popcorn, the plaster could also come down. Right?

Hello,

Just spent a $1K to have “a skilled pro” remove the ceiling popcorn in my 1300 sq ft. house, and my nightmare continues. The arrangement was to have my ceiling prepared to a “ready to paint” status. My professional painting is now saying that the ceiling has not been properly sanding. To my untrained eye, the ceiling looks smooth. What is it that the painter sees that I don’t see? Is it that hard to do a job like this right if you’re supposed to be experienced? Also, any suggestion on how to either encourage the worker to fix the job or find someone else who can correct the problem.

Thanks for your input.

We are getting ready to sell our house with 3 bedrooms with popcorn ceilings. The realtor told me getting rid of the popcorn would be the “most bang for your buck”.

Today I got a quote from a painter. $500 to remove the popcorn in all three rooms plus…$3500 to paint the interior of the house.
I thought $500 for the ceilings was resonable, but $3500 to paint a 1200 sqft. house?!?! That seems kinda high to me, but what do I know.

Anyway, after they left. I got up on the ladder and scrapped a piece off to see what would happen. It came off very easily and what was left looked pretty good. So, I scraped off one whole room usings a 10″ mudding knife. It took less than an hour and I never wet the ceiling with anything. It is smooth. I can see no nail heads or seams. It’s just a little rough so I plan sand it down a bit to get it as smooth as possible before pianting.

So, now with this little bit of experience I am wondering why anyone would bother wetting the ceiling first. Mine came completely off with one pass of the scrapper.

Of course, since I wasn’t planning on doing this it all fell on the floor and was a huge mess, but the shop vac sucked it up pretty well.

I hope the other 2 rooms are this easy.

We had our popcorn ceilings analyzed for Asbestos. Our home was built in 1977 and results were 2-3% chrysotile asbestos which is the most common in popcorn ceilings.

Now that we know, everyone is telling me to
A) Leave the ceilings alone,
B) Just cover it up with another layer of drywall.

But I’m still thinking of either scraping or completely tearing out the drywall in all since it has some sagging issues. Am I nutz or is everyone else being completely paranoid? My wife is the one who is most worried because she is pregnant and she is one of those worriers.

Thought I saw an address of where to send a sample of popcorn for testing, but now I can’t find it.
Do you have an address where I could send a sample.
If there were to be NO asbestos, our family would get off our backs about doing the work ourselves.
We are in our late 60’s but we can “scrape”.

Has anyone tried the popcorn scraper that has a plastic bag attached to it to catch the falling material? check out the site below it looks like a good idea. http://www.homaxproducts.com/products/texture/15/index.html

I just bought a home that has popcorn ceilings in almost every room and all the hallways. A co-worker told me that if I remove it I won’t get the smooth finish that I have on the walls when I’m done painting. Instead, he suggests leaving the popcorn in place and covering it all with drywall and then painting over it. This will be my first experience removing a popcorn ceiling and I want it to look well done. But the drywall idea seems labor-intensive and costly, even if I do it myself. I would save money by not removing the popcorn, but how much more would I spend on drywall, spackle, joints, hangers, etc? What do you think…can I get a good result by just removing the popcorn the old-fashioned way?

I used a pole mounted popcorn scraper with bag attachment ($15 at home despot) along with a pump sprayer. The scraper is poorly made, so I needed to straighten the blade and rebend the neck every time I emptied the bag, but it worked great. I removed over 900 sf of popcorn in a day with no damage to the underlying drywall or joint compound.

I like how this one post has turned into more of a “shared experience” discussion than just me rambling about my experimental home improvement projects. Welcome to those coming in from LifeHacker and thanks to everybody who has contributed…especially Steve for the “sucky” popcorn catching tip. I’m a webdesigner, not a contractor – and as you can see, I’ve had a steady flow of good questions since I posted this back in August. Any tips/tricks/hacks you can offer here will definitely help the masses…and myself if I ever get to removing the last of the remaining popcorn in the kitchen and hallway.

Why not hire a plasterer to skim the whole ceiling? Quicker and you’ll probably need to skim the ceiling after removal anyway (get one who clears up too!).

Found your site because it was linked to from a site that I regularly read. Just thought I would make the following comments regarding textured ceilings. I’m 56 and did most of the construction of my house myself (in the late 70’s and early 80’s). The popular style in the area was to manually “stimple” the ceilings with a “stimple brush” which gave a texture that could be varied to acheive a more individual style than the spray on “popcorn”. This was popular because our generation grew up in homes that had smooth painted ceilings. My sons, who are in their 20s, don’t like textured ceilings and think smooth ceilings are “cool”, and textures belong on walls

Go figure!

RE; Asbestos concerns.

When my husband and I decided to remove our popcorn ceilings, we were concerned about asbestos issue due to the age of the home.

We spoke with a company who that did testing for asbestos. They advised that they could test for asbestos for (if I remember correctly) around $50.

However, since we were only going to do 2 15×15 rooms AND since we had already decided to do it ourselves…the guy at the testing facility said just save the money and use it instead to buy some quality breathing devices to wear while working.

We spent about the same amount ($50) on 2 good quality ventilated masks and wore them while scraping and cleaning up.

I think that many of the concerns about asbestos are more directed at people who have been exposed to high levels, either by performing frequent asbestos installation/removal or simply by breathing in a lot of small particles. I believe the HEPA masks filtered out any level of asbestos that might have been present.

Matt–I don’t believe asbestos is used anymore in popcorn ceilings. In fact, I’m convinced of it. Some google searches can be done to check.

I had a popcorn ceiling once on an older 60s home and paid for a simple asbestos test. It was relatively cheap and revealed things like gypsum was one of the materials. No asbestos, no worries. A few miles over, we met some poeple who had had asbestos in their ceilings and had to abate it, major pain. I have heard (uncomfirmed) that asbestos was used more in the West US than the East, but I don’t know if that’s true.

There may be an issue with lead paint in popcorn ceilings on older homes, but I’m not sure that lead paint was used as much on walls, as opposed to things like doors and windows, etc. Someone more expert could answer that one. But if you’re very concerned with all that dust coming off, a simple lead test is cheap too with a kit.

Helpful Tips for Wetting/Scraping.

After reading every post here and a few other places, I came up with my own plan of attack for a 12×12 bedroom. Water is the key to getting this stuff off, but I think the amount of water is the trick! Instead of soaking or spraying the ceiling, just use a small amount to water and do a small area at a time (like 2 x 2ft). Spay the area and only let it soak for 5 to 10 seconds. The popcorn layer will turn to mud and scrap right off. The trick is to not let the adhesive layer of the popcorn coating to get wet. This way, rather than bear drywall and tape joints, you end up with a smooth white layer of popcorn adhesive that looks like drywall mud and is perfectly smooth.

I did a 12 x 12 bedroom with two 32oz sray bottles in an hour. I used a 10″ drywall knife for the center and a smaller 3 or 4″ knife around the outside. The drywall finisher didn’t put the final coat of mud on the ceiling’s corner tape since the popcorn would cover it. So, I was very careful to not rip the tape by going with the tape rather than running the scrapper into the wall (perpindicular with the tape). I followed up with a damp spong to clean the corner of the small stuff I missed with the knife. I’ll add a top coat of drywall mud to the ceiling side of the corner tape before priming. The ceiling come out so smooth, it will only need a fine sanding if any at all.

Hey Melanie, I have no idea what texture you should use after scaping. We’ve just been following the same method I outlined in the article throughout the house (already done all 3 bedrooms, a bathroom, and a hallway). As far as paint goes, we’ve been doing a coat of ceiling primer and then a coat of paint. In some rooms we used ceiling white, and in others we used a color. Getting the edging perfect between the wall color and the ceiling has been tough, but I think we’re going to do crown moulding in some of the rooms where the wall color is very different from the ceiling.

Great info for removing this garbage off of our ceilings. You both did a wonderful job of it. So glad we found your site. We were just slammed with by the wrath of Katrina here. You know what happened here. Well we are totally redoing everything (whether we want to or not). But I can tell you this ceiling has got to go. I am following your tips to the T.
By the way Amy , in the 2nd to last pic here. I could just swear you look almost exactly like my daughter Nicole. You both did a terrific job in your home as well as the way you explained things. Thankyou for offering this info. I know it will take a while to do, but we are now well informed. Have a great day. Audrey and fam

hello, ALooks great by the way.

What year is your house? Were you not afraid of Asbestos?

I just bought a house and all three bedrooms have popcorn ceiling this stuff is so damn ugly. The house was built in 1987. Is there anyway it could have asbestos?

I have a 1925 bungalow that has ugly popcorn cielings in the dining room and one bedroom. Last weekend I was putting in new light fixtures in the living room, and discovered that there is a popcorn cieling in that room too… covered with drywall. I’m sure that is a more expensive way to get rid of the popcorn, but slapping new drywall over it seems easier. Any thoughts?

Each room took us less than a day (8ish hours depending on the size of the room) from start to finish with a coat of primer and a coat of paint. The job is actually more prep and cleanup than actual work. Looking up at the ceiling here in the office, we got them mostly smooth. There are a few areas where you can tell where a drywall joint was, and in general the edge between the wall and the ceiling is a little rough, but overall it went pretty well. We’re not too worried about that edge because we plan to put up crown moulding eventually.

Hey Benjamin, in relation to other home improvement projects, removing popcorn ceilings isn’t that tough. Regardless, if you’re not up for the job, you could always try putting up the crown moulding and sealing the top with a bead of caulk. I’ve seen that done before and it doesn’t look as bad as you might think. I’m a big proponent of just scrapping it all off though.

Hopefully, once you’ve scrapped, sanded, smoothed over any imperfections with joint compound, and sanded the joint compound down you’ll have a smooth ceiling to prime and paint.

I am in the process of scraping 3000 sq ft of popcorn. This was due to the cost of hiring it out – on that note, and always looking for a little business oppty – would you pay to have someone prep, scrape, and clean up your popcorn for about a $1.25 per sq ft…

Just looking for some input…it seems that most painters and contractors will unhappily do the job, but since they dont specialize they are up around $2.00 a sq ft….Am I crazy? Do tell!

I am ready to tackle my ceiling tomorrow. I hope I can do it in one day. My celing has water spots in it. My hot water heater broke the other day and put a nasty yellow spot in the ceiling. I am selling my townhouse so I have to get ride of this popcorn crap on my ceiling. It looks like previous owners patched the ceiling in a bunch of places. here are some pictures

I need to repaint parts of the walls to. Can I patch the walls or am I doing to have to repaint the whole place. It was just painted so I really don’t want to. I can try and color match it, but I really don’t want to

More Asbestos Info.

This article on asbestos and popcorn ceilings appeared today on MSNBC at

http://realestate.msn.com/Improve/Article.aspx?cp-documentid=273335

There are a number of other things to be concerned about regarding asbestos and lung cancer. There is No Minimum amount that has been determined to be safe, the effects may not show up from 10 to 40 years and popcorn ceilings using asbestos were allowed to continue up to at least 1986 so that manufacturers could use up existing stocks. Other uses were curtailed by 1978.
Also the wallboard(aka sheetrock) and mud joint compound contained asbestos also. This means that sanding the joints or broken paper on the sheetrock, nailing and drilling will release sufficient amounts of asbestos fibers and are very dangerous. Vacuuming will likely spread asbestos laden fibers throughout the entire house through it’s exhaust and will hang around for years to come as one dusts and cleans over time causing further exposure.
I really don’t want to spoil your home decorating fun but I hope you all will be, at least, a little more careful.

Editor’s Note: 🙂 I removed your second post where you pasted in the article from the link above and made the link in this post clickable.

My guess Juilian, is that ceiling has been painted a few times and the water isn’t getting through the paint. You could try scraping it just enough to knock off some of the popcorn and then wet it and see if it scrapes off easier, but it may just end up being a tough job.

“Maybe there are different varieties and thicknesses of the texture because mine is very difficult to scrape off.”

That might be the case Gregg, I know we had a more difficult time scraping the popcorn in the guest room than we had with the rest of the house – the only parts we haven’t done yet are the kitchen and the living room with it’s vaulted ceilings. Wetting it (with a pump sprayer preferrably) helped a lot for us. Sorry to hear you’re having problems with it.

Ok, so I kinda got the hang of it. I had to REALLY wet the stuff down, let it dry for a minute, wet it down again, then scrape and spray a little bit more as I go along. It seems to work best with a smaller spackle knife even though it takes more time. As long as the popcorn is soaked I don’t have to press as hard which helps to not damage the sheet rock. It got easier, but still sucks. Builders that put this stuff up should be put in jail. Time for a beer. Thanks!

This is a wonderful site, I’m so happy to have found it. Our test for asbestos just came back positive and I am really disappointed and torn about what to do. My husband wants us to remove our popcorn ceilings ourselves. We did remove a small section to test how difficult it would be and I must say it was very easy. I don’t know if it’s worth the risk our health, or if this issue is overblown. I know that poor workers who do this for a living year in and year out are exposed much more than people doing their own home, but does the one time offer too great a danger? I have learned from your site that many many people do it themselves and no one can answer if it’s worth it but the people themselves. I am so confused, we hate the popcorn and it really dates what is otherwise a beautiful home. What do all of nice folks think?
Best wishes,
Linda

I’m STILL shocked that everyone thinks this crap comes off easy. If you ask me, if the stuff comes off like icing off a cake…DO IT! DO IT ACROSS AMERICA!! Unfortunately for me, it was not easy. I tore the sheet rock paper. I tore the sheet rock tape. The solution that you mix with water, what is that? I went to Home Depot and they only had popcorn to put up, but no remover. Are you talking about DIF? Regardless, you will still soak the sheet rock and tear through the paper. Ugh, maybe I’m just bitter. I’m gon’ go jump out a window.

It sounds like a good idea to me Janie. After we finished the scraping/sanding/patching we just used a coat of primer and then a coat of paint…but I bet if you used something thick like that it would help to smooth out some of the rough spots.

Hi everyone, writing from the Netherlands. What a great site. We are moving back to my home in Bakersfield, California in June, and the first thing to do is the popcorn ceilings. House will be empty (renters for 10 years) so no problem with mess. We did not know how to start, or to pay someone, etc. Now, we have some answers. Thanks, again, and as we continue on our journey, we’ll be back to comment, or to sing more praises. OT: I miss America!!

Helpful Comment

It occurs to me that the several people who are having extreme difficulty removing your popcorn have either encountered popcorn ceilings that have been painted, or have mistakenly identified a textured paint as popcorn. There are a couple of textured paints that contain popcorn-like aggregates and look very similar to popcorn. I’m a remodeler/handyman, and have lost my lunch money on a job or two where I made similar misdiagnoses. The only answer for those types of ceilings is a chemical stripper. ugh.

Real popcorn ceilings only need to be wetted to be removed. And instead of dry-sanding, try wet-sanding instead. Cut a piece of low-pile carpeting to fit a pole sander, dunk it in a mop bucket, and have at it. It takes some repetition, but you’re not breathing dust.

I also have a palm sander that has a dust collection bag. I took off the bag and rigged up some hoses from the sander to my shop vac. It’s remarkably effective and useful for any sanding you do, from wood to spackle.

This is a pretty fun exchange you got started here. Nice work. Best to all.

Did you ever think your popcorn post would have such a long life? I’ve read every post as we are moving into a home built in ’69; one of my builder relatives says it will definitely have the asbestos corn. He suggests that we wear the respirators, thoroughly moisten the painted popcorn, partially knock it down, then moisten it again. Then we will hire a drywall co. to put up a “knock-down” textured ceiling. Then we’ll prime and paint. It won’t be totally smooth but it should look nice, much better than the filthy looking popcorn. I will admit that the asbestos thing has me freaked but I’m going to be as careful as possible and do it anyway. My relative says that keeping it moist is key as it is the dust that can be dangerous. So here we go!

Anyone come across a popcorn ceiling with gold glitter in it? We’re about to buy a house this weekend — only thing I hate — of course, the popcorn ceilings….that’s how I found your site…

Anyway, all of the ceilings have this gold glitter…I wonder if that means that the popcorn was painted….hmmm. What to do…

Awesome post. I am going to sears to get a scraper. My kitchen and bathrooms are smooth and I love them I have 3 bedrooms and 2 living rooms to remove. That’ll take what, a day 🙂

Does the wet scraper technique work on ceilings that are not true popcorn, but still have joint compound applied? My ceilings look like someone took a mop full of compound and pressed it in a pattern. I want smooth ceilings, but am curious if the “scapings” will come off in sheets the same way that or if I need to simply wet and trowel it smooth.

Help!

@Quanda: If it’s not popcorn, it probably will not come off easily, especially if the texture is created with Joint compound. Try scraping in a small area. If it doesn’t come off you may have to re-drywall or retexture to get a smooth surface.

@Amanda: Maybe you were allergic to something in the popcorn. My skin gets like that whenever I have to do anything with the fiberglass insulation in the attic.

Kristine,

I have seen several ceilings with gold glitter in the popcorn. Who knows why! But I think they might be from the 60’s or possibly 70’s. You might want to get it tested for asbestos before you do anything. Of course they might have used that stuff into the 80’s also.

Janie 🙂

Ben, you get a “helpful” icon on your comment for the simple fact that you know the sheen value of the paint you’re using. We left the ceiling paint in two of our bedrooms and the surface isn’t perfect, but it’s very non-reflective. The right lighting choices can hide the imperfections and I don’t think we’ll ever need to clean the ceilings in those rooms. The only rooms that I would worry about needing to clean would be the bathroom (again…pee vapors) and the kitchen. As far as “tricks” go, the roughest part of our ceilings is around the edges. We plan to put up some crown moulding in some of the rooms to cover that up.

My wife just read your comment and says, “Definitely!” We only plan to be in our house for a total of about 5 years, and we had already moved in when we started on the ceilings. While you’ve got the whole house empty, you may want to do the whole thing at one time. Spend a few evenings scraping popcorn, spend a few more days sanding/patching/spackling, then paint it all at once. That should save you some clean up and prep work time. Best of luck!

Once the cieling is sanded. People are mentioning “texture to match the walls” What is all this business about textureing the ceilings, What do you use to apply this texture, and why can’t you simply prime and paint?

Thanks for the information and encouragement. My hubby and I bought a condo last month that not only has popcorn ceilings, but also popcorn WALLS. That’s when I went looking for info on how to remove the stuff. I got started a couple of days ago, and it’s coming off easily, though cleanup is worse than I expected. I’m smearing dust on doors and floors with a washrag – have to find a better way of washing up. Most of the other condo owners just painted over the popcorn. Thank goodness no one ever painted ours, though there are some painted spots that are hard to scrape clean.

Thanks again for the help!

Wow, great information here, stuff I never even thought of. Thank you to all contributors for the advice. We are considering removing popcorn from our small 5X9 bathroom. It is quite humid in there, of course, and the popcorn is kind of falling off. We have purchased some tongue and groove cedar and intend on covering the ceiling with that. Therefore the final finish does not have to be perfect by any means. The asbestos thing has got me concerned and I may just put the cedar right over (under) the popcorn. I see there are others that have put new sheet rock over the popcorn. Any advice or similar projects?

I saw some folks posted the Homax URL for some of their products. I just wanted to pass on a similar link to the solution they have that you mix with 3 gallons of water to spray on the popcorn. Someone previously mentioned Litex at Lowes, but I found Homax at HomeDepot. I haven’t used it yet but I will re-post with the results when I do.

http://www.homaxproducts.com/products/texture/23/index.html

Praise be to you, Jason! I googled “popcorn ceilings” and you were the second on the list. We have a 5,000 sq ft 1990 built home with popcorn ceilings- its horror is not limited to the 70’s. I’m tackling a bathroom first and will go from there. LOVE your pictures and instructions, thank you!

I have a question we just bought a house that as popcorn ceiling but it’s been painted, we were told by our contractor that it would be very difficult to remove cause we can’t just wet it and painted. To save some money we have decided to attemp to remove it ourselves, we just started on our plaster ceiling and it’s been really hard to scrap off. Any suggestions? thanks

Wow, the stuff really does come right off, just be patient and give it a few minutes (2-3) for the water to soak in before you scrape and it’ll be easier. Go LIBERALLY on the water and you won’t gouge as much. TIP- I noticed that the popcorn had little cracks in the mud and if I wetted the right amount and waited a couple of minutes- I could tell it was ready to be taken down when these cracks disapeared. I don’t think this has been mentioned before but a great reason for getting rid of the popcorn is that your ceilings look so much taller!! Yes you will have to do some clean up which isn’t as bad as you think (kind of cleansing actually :).Make sure you wear goggles and a mask! This is one of the easiest “major” DIY’s that you can do to update your home.

Great tips, thanks to everyone. I didn’t see this one though. I took on the task of removing the popcorn ceiling in my moms house (built by my grandfather in the 40s or 50s). So far scraping it off was as easy as I was told it would be (I just found this sight today – and by the way I had no idea about the asbestos in the stuff until I was about 98% done). MY PROBLEM: underneath the popcorn I found texture. Not the simple knock down stuff but what appears to be slightly deeper, could be plaster but I have been able to scrape through it. I have scraped what I could but there is still a lot of the popcorn stuck in the texturing. Oh, and it does have glitter in it, groovy. I have found that I could get up there and use a wet cloth to hand wipe the popcorn out of the crevices but after about an hour of working on about 6 square feet I quit for the day and have not been back for about three weeks trying to figure this out. In the mean time I have heard about the asbestos problem and have been really reluctant to return.

Question: Can I prime over, drywall compound over, or do something over what is left and move on with my life and the completion of this project. someone suggested using a steam vac to wash the stuff out and suck it up at the same time since it would be a smaller amount. I was afraid of ruining a perfectly good steam vac.

I agree with Eric. If the house was built in the 40s or 50s, you’re likely to have plaster. I’ve read some cases about textured plaster ceilings. If this is the case, you probably want to stop scraping and start smoothing/sanding the rough spots with joint compound.

Thank Google and Jason for this wealth of info —

Here’s my Q: Anyone know if I will ruin my Dyson if I try the dry-scraper-attached-to-the-vacuum-hose tecnique?

How about if I use the Dyson with semi-wet popcorn bits?

(Am trying to decide if I need a wet vac or if I can use what I already have. I’m all taped up and ready to paint the guest bedroom and am trying to decide if I should de-popcorn or not. Y’all are giving me strength and the curiousity to try it out.)

Thanks!

ever try to paint a textured ceiling with a roller. texture comes right off. no problem. no mess. tho i prefer the texture myself & do not care for the looks of plain smooth ceilings. which yellow faster. & just have no style to them. with texture you should add paint to the mix to seal the coating better & have no problems with flaking & they don’t yellow as fast. tho i’m not an idiot for liking texture as mentioned, i did notice the bathroom & kitchen were NOT the 1st rooms done so the smell of pee must not have been a problem. when the mix has paint added it will not absorn any more odors or anything more than regular painted ceilings. i may not be an expert on the subject but i could be as close as this board has seen. next time use water & a roller to remove the texture. stay in 1 place & it will turn loose. stick to the roller & no mess. thank you very much
elvis has left the building

Thanks for the site. About the asbestos. I worked for the telephone co. for 41 years and in the 1960’s and 70’s we “pot wiped” all our cable closures, that involved lead cable and molten solder so we had asbestos everywhere to protect ourselves from burns… Even after the government outlawed that we were in attics with asbestos insulation on heating ducts and blowen asbestos inulation and on water pipes wraped with it. I know of no one that has a health issue from contact with any of this… But there are some things that you should do to protect yourself. First wear a mask, even one of those dusk masks will help. Water is your best friend, wet down the ceiling to keep particals out of the air. Clean up the debris as soon as you can and try to keep the stuff on the floor damp to keep particles out of the air. Seal the room to keep the rest of the house clean, wipe down everything with a damp cloth after you are thru and ventilate the room to the outside, it’s whats in the air that you can breath that is a danger. Clean yourself up with a good long shower and keep your hands away from your mouth as much as possible. The sanding? That’s no problem, it’s only the “popcorn” that’s a concern. As for me, asbestos comes from the ground and I feel it’s OK to put it back. One last thought keep the government, your neighbors and the EPA out of it.

Jim, if you are taking pictures with a digital camera, post them all up somewhere and paste the link here. There are lots of great free picture hosts out there. Photobucket.com is pretty good. If you need any help, let me know. As far as help goes with the mudding over popcorn, I’m not the man to ask. 🙂

My townhouse is 1700 square feet, 850 downstairs, 850 upstairs. It all contains popcorn ceilings. Downstairs has one living room (500 square feet), and one room next to the kitchen that is about 350 square feet. The kitchen is not part of this job. The upstairs has four rooms. One master bedroom, one boy room, one girl room, and one guest room. The master bedroom has vaulted ceilings and is the biggest room of the four. The other three rooms are similiar in size. I want the popcorn ceiling gone in all the rooms.

The estimates I received so far range from $1200 to $8000 to get the job done (meaning, popcorn gone, ceiling smoothed, primed, and painted. I provide all the primer and paint). crazy! here is my plan…. Hire a day laborer who speaks English and is experienced in this type of work. Pay him $13 per hour for four hours initially to get an estimate from him. This estimate would include how long it would take for him and two other day laborers to do the job. That in itself will tell me approximately how much the labor will cost overall. Go with him to the hardware store to buy everything I need to do the job before hand (materials mentioned in the above article, plus primer, paint, and whatever else I need). ok, so here is my estimate. first four hours at $13.00 per hour is $52.00. I estimate the job would be done in three days with an 8 hour work day. so that would be 3 people time 8 hours times 3 days time $13.00 per hour with a total of $936.00. So the total cost for labor is estimated to be about $1000.

Does anyone have any comments on this plan, the time it would take, the day laborer problems, the cost estimate? I have no idea, but I really don’t want to spend $3000? for a contractor to do the job. Any comment and suggestion is greatly appreciated. Thank you for looking and a very much thank you for this site.

Swirl texture ceiling

I just wanted to post my experience to help anyone who may have a similar problem. I have a very old home and most of the ceilings have been painted with a thick swirl texture paint. This is a bit different from popcorn ceilings and doesn’t come off nearly as easy.
We originally began by using warm water combined with a texture removal product and soaked the ceilings and then scraped off the paint with a putty knife. This was working but was very slow and time consuming. The paint was so thick that most of the water wasn’t absorbing all the way through.
We had a lot of luck with a steamer when trying to remove old wallpaper in another room. So we thought we would give it a shot rather than resorting to chemical paint removers. We simply held the steamer over a spot on the ceiling for a couple of minutes and then scraped the paint in that area off. This worked very well for us. The steam was much better at punching through layers than hot water. It is also helps to score the ceiling first. It is more of a two person project because one person can steam while the other scrapes.
We picked up or steamer at Lowes for about $50.00. It’s probably one of the best investments we have made. Some precautions must be taken because you are dealing with some hot water dripping down from above you. We wear long gloves and work to the side rather than directly above our heads.
Also, we tested for absetsos first and got the green light. Hope this helps someone along the way! Good Luck!

My dad is a professional drywall master who ran a compay of 40 men and did Meryl Streeps, Kevin Bacons and Million Dollar homes. He did my ceiling in the bathroom and living room. You can only do a room at time. It is a process though. one you use the process above with wetting the ceiling scraping. See if you have you see any waves. Sometimes it waves. You can use a long straight edge blade and fill it in with durabond 45 or 90. Then you can fill in all nicks. Also rescrew where you see nails popped. Use a punch to punch in the existing nails. Then redo all nails with 3 coats. You can use durabond to make it a quicker process. Also before you even do joint compounding it is smart to do a bonding agent before all the materials. Then once you patch and do nails it is time for a finished skim coat. Skim coating is doing the whole ceiling with using a trowel to point a fresh layer of joint compound on the ceiling. It is good to do one layer then sand then do another layer another day. The second layer/finish coat you can mix in dish soup to make it a nice smooth clean finish. This makes it easier to sand. Then you sand everything with a light. One person holds the light and one sands to hit all areas. Then you use a primer, generic or we used Bin primer. Then paint. A good trick on skim coating is to skim coat between all the nails first. Do the whole ceiling between the nails to fill the valleys in and then do the nails later. This will finish with a nice flat ceiling.
Then you have the best ceiling ever.

I am new to the site and figured I’d give it a try for advice. We had the dreaded popcorn ceiling removed professionally because it had asbestos. After the popcorn was removed, the ceiling underneath was pretty clean with the paper of the drywall exposed and compound only over the tape lines. I patched up minor scrapes from the popcorn removal process. We are going put on a knock-down texture ourselves. My question is: With the drywall paper exposed, do I need to use a primer before applying the knockdown texture? I am not certain since the popcorn was installed without the primer and it was up since the house was built 35 years ago. Therefore, it would seem like I can add the knockdown and then primer before painting. Thanks.

We just put a dry rag over our sanding pole and used that to wipe the ceiling down after sanding. If you don’t there’ll be a lot of dust on there that may prevent the paint or primer from sticking.

Like everyone, I am very thankful for this site. I just bought a condo here in Seattle. The ceiling is covered in, you guessed it, popcorn. It was built in 1982. Lots of people tell you that if your house was built after ’78, you’re in the clear. However, my research has resulted in the discovery that although the manufacture of asbestos was banned in ’78, companies were allowed to continue using their remaining inventory until it ran out. So get it tested if your place was built all the way through the mid 80’s.

I had a lab test mine today and thank God, there’s no trace of asbestos!

Okay, to the point. My ceilings are painted as well. Just scraping off a sample for the lab was a serious pain. I have read that you can try and dry-scrape the paint to create holes that water can seep into. In fact, this technique was mentioned somewhere above. So I am gonna start scraping tonight. Here’s my plan:

I got a paint scraping brush (a coarse wire brush) and an extension pole. I’m going to carefully rough up the popcorn with this thing, and then try the regular water/scrape method. I will be very careful not to brush too hard because I dont’ want to mess up the drywall.

I haven’t moved into my condo yet, so I’m not terribly concerned about dust (I have cheapo laminate floors and no carpet… floors to be replaced soon).

Any advice is much appreciated. I will fill you guys in on how this went, since there is very little info on how to remove painted popcorn.

Thanks again for this great site.

I read in other forums that I need to skim coat after i scrape and sand the popcorn ceiling.

Is is necessary. Is there an easy solution for skim coating?

I have a great idea for putting an orange peel texture on your ceiling after you scrape, mix half primer with half sheetrock mud ( it will be thick but easy to roll), mix very, VERY well…. use a long nap roller and roll away . You can do the same mixture with your ceiling paint . I did this to my walls also when I took down wallpaper and there was no texture on walls and I wanted to paint them instead of re-wallpapering ……works GREAT !!! gives the perfect orange peel look .

Hi. This is a follow up to my previous post above. I tried my wire brush paint-scraping method. It did not work at all. My popcorn ceiling was painted. I got really lucky though. after I realized that the paint-scraping method didn’t work very well, I decided to try to spray the stuff anyway. I was so lucky, because the water somehow was able to penetrate the paint. So I was able to scrape mine off without any major problems.

Regarding the question about whether or not you need to skim coat the walls after removing the popcorn, I don’t know that it is absolutely necessary, but you will need to make sure to use a very good primer and maybe do two coats. Paint doesn’t absorb evenly into paper. The other thing is that you will probably create nicks and scrapes in the drywall when you scrape the popcorn off. So this will require some patching with joint compound anyway.

Regarding the message from mary about applying joint compound over the popcorn, I would really not recommend this method at all. It will be very difficult to make it smooth and will take you much longer than just scraping the stuff off in the first place. Trust me. I have spent the last week or so scraping off the popcorn and skim-coating all of the walls and ceilings in my 665 square foot condo. I have stayed up until like 1am every night working on the place, and I will probably need another week or so. Skim coating takes forever when you apply it over smooth drywall. I can’t imagine how long it would take on top of popcorn.

The scraping part is actually very easy. The skim coating is hell. But it looks fantastic when you’re done! Good luck everyone!!

oh where did i leave my brain? of course, the compound is wet and could very well loosen the popcorn and we’d have the ceiling falling off in chunks.

still, this is not going to be a DYI. we’re over 60 and smart MDs say i’m allergic to dust. (i’m in denial over both).

do i hear any volunteers? thought not. in lieu of that, does anyone know of a reasonably priced contractor in Savannah who would take on the task?

thanks, all.

mary

Just finished a 4000 sq ft home that was covered in popcorn and wanted to thank everyone for their tips. A few items to note on how we did it might make the project go smoother for some others.

Lowes Home imporovemnets has a 12 inch floor scraper for about $20 that was a life saver. It was a little rough on the arms, but you could scrape an 8 x 8 area in less than a minute. A 12 inch putty knife also works real well, but you will need a ladder.

The popcorn was 25 yrs old, and had been painted a few time. We found that two passes on the ceiling were needed, but not altogether to time consuming if you follow the following procedure. Wet the whole ceiling and let stand for 5 to 10 minutes (we used a 1 gal pump sprayer). Scrape the surface to open up the paint and knock off some of the popcorn. Come back and wet the ceiling again and let soak for another 5 minutes. This time the old popcorn will get saturated with water and become a little mushy. Scrape again, and you will find that the popcorn will come down very easily.

Lastly, we had covered the floor with construction paper on the first few rooms but this seemed a little messy to clean up. So we opted to cover the floors with 1 mil plastic taped around the walls. This made clean up very easy.

Hope some one benefits from this info, and I apologize if this info is redundant. I didn’t have time to look back and see if someone else had mentioned these items.

Thanks again,
Rich

Great and informative board here. I’m going to tackle my home office ceiling in a few minutes, so I’m getting ready and studying up. I just had a brief comment to add: I was at an acquaintance’s house, and they had painted their popcorn ceiling in their daughter’s room black. And it looked pretty good! You didn’t know it was popcorn until you really looked close, and it gave it an interesting textured look. I thought this might be another option for those who won’t or can’t remove their acoustic ceiling. Thanks for the help.

Just wanted to let you know…I was all ready to get rid of the popcorn throughout our 1987 house, when the paranoia of all things deadly got to me, and I had it tested. Yep, positive for asbestos, 3%. Between that & the radon we had to mitigate last year, I should have about 6 months to live.

GET IT TESTED!! It only cost $35, and everyone was calling me crazy, with a house built in 1987.

Thank you for this site! I had just bought 10 gallons of popcorn ceiling removal solution, @ $9.89 a gal, but couldn’t find a MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheet) on it when I got home, so I googled and came to your site and tried water mixed with some dishwashing liquid, and it worked just fine, so I am going back down to my favorite “home” place and swapping it out for as much plaster of paris as I can buy because your site had a great post about using Venetian Plaster to finish off the ceiling, and it sounded really cool.

jkw

Jason,
We have two homes we are planning to remove popcorn ceilings out of. Amen! You mention you have a smooth ceiling now. Did you put anything up, such as a knock-down texture or did you paint right on to the cleaned ceiling itself? If you painted right on to the ceiling, what are the procedures? Primer and then paint, or just primer? We are wanting plain white ceilings and I want to make sure anything underneath the primer/paint such as lumps from tapes (especially at the edges where the ceiling and walls meet) and nail holes are as invisible as possible. Sure do appreciate your info. Looks like a popular website. Thank you!!! And thanks also for your step-by-step pictures. You have encouraged me to work in an empty room and change out my 2″ scraper to a larger scraper.
Best regards,
Linda

We had our “popcorn” scraped off of our ceilings in 2005 by a friend and I’m now sending out a sample because, I still have some in the closets and I’m worried it contains Asbestos. My question is, because my house was built in California in 1977 is there a beter chance it does not contain asbestos because of California maybe being stricter about building codes and laws? Thanks.

Jason,

Ours was an extreme case. My husband and I scraped every inch (ceilings AND walls, including closets) of our condo starting in May, and finished up in August. After we’d scraped, sanded, spackled, and painted all the walls and ceilings, we tackled the kitchen, refinishing the walnut cabinets – which had been painted white – and installing a wood laminate floor in place of the old vinyl faux brick. The place looks so wonderful that I would recommend to anyone to take out the (expletive deleted) popcorn.

For Kristen: if the stuff was wet, that’s a plus. Most cases of asbestosis happened after long-term exposure to dry asbestos floating in the air – but there’s one case, at least, of a wife who contracted asbestosis from washing her husband’s asbestos-impregnated clothing over a period of years.

Once again, Jason, thank you for this forum. Please let me know if you’d be interested in “before,” “during,” and “after” pictures of our project.

Nancy B.

I’ve just spent about 2 hours reading from start to finish and I have a few comments. I’ll fight the urge to be verbose but I’m going to have to apologize in advance for going on a bit.

First of all, I don’t have a problem with popcorn ceilings. Popcorn is a relatively easy method of coating ceilings and hiding imperfections. I live in SC and have installed home alarm systems in new homes for about the last 10 years. Probably 3 out of every 100 new houses DOES’NT have popcorn sprayed ceilings so the so called “fad” from the 70s and 80s isn’t just a fad. It’s easy and cheap.

I’m sure many of the readers and posters here have had experience trying to get ceilings flat and smooth. I have and it sucks. If I was putting up a new ceiling I would probably go to the trouble of getting it smooth but even the slightest imperfection would drive me nuts. I’d be skimming and sanding for months if that’s what it would take. Having said that, I’d be willing to re-popcorn a ceiling if I wasn’t sure what was under the old stuff. Which is exactly what I’m doing now.

Question? Has anyone ever partially removed popcorn then recoated with new? I’m scraping until almost smooth and then I’ll prime/seal it before blowing new stuff. Any tips?

Next, I’d like to make a comment about asbestos. Many of the posts here seem to have a blas� approach concerning asbestos. A few years ago, while crawling under a building pulling new phone lines, I was exposed. I was very upset with my boss for not warning me about it. The asbestos was in the form of insulation around old cast iron sewer pipes which had been busted up and left there. I crawled throught this mess several times before I realized what it was. It was caked into my clothing, skin and hair. I wasn’t wearing any kind of mask. I never suspected there was any danger. I did some research on asbestosis and was a bit alarmed. Now, having said all this, I must add that, IMHO, the EPA often goes way overboard when placing restrictions on certain materials and the “proper” means of removing and disposing of them. So, you are probably wondering, what is my position on asbestos? Caution, caution, caution. Should I repeat that? No, I don’t think so. Read up on asbestosis. Be sure you know what you are dealing with. If you are in your early years, just starting out, planning to raise a family, consider this. You won’t know you have asbestosis until you are diagnosed with it. There is no cure. It can kill you. You may not live long enough to see your grandkids go to kindergarten. Yes, I will repeat it… caution, caution, caution. If you are sure you want to remove it, water is your friend. Keep it damp and don’t let it get airborn. Don’t strip a whole room and then take a break and go clean up. Clean it up well as you go. Seal it in double bags. Buy a decent air filter and run it on full power in the room you’re stripping. Change filters often. Stay in the room, preferably sealed, until you are finished scraping, clean thoroughly, wipe down everything, clean tools, put all rags, drop cloths, scraps, etc. into bags and seal them up. Don’t let this stuff spread around your house. If possible, remove contaminated clothing in the project room and transport it to your washing machine in plastic bags. Or, buy a cheap pair of PJs to wear while working and throw them away when finished. This may sound extreme but this stuff can come back to haunt you later. And, one last comment on this topic: check your local codes before throwing this stuff in the trash. There are severe penalties if you get caught throwing asbestos contaminated trash into public landfills or recycling centers.

OK, I’ve gone on long enough. BTW, my wife hates popcorn ceilings but since we are going to sell this place soon, she’s OK with respraying the popcorn. Our next home is going to have wood on the ceilings. Looks nice and doesn’t have potentially hazardous coatings. Good luck with all you projects and have a nice day.

I did a MSN search for Popcorn ceilings and your site was number one and I totally dig it! Just wanted to show you this link that I found in the same search.

http://www.buyezrip.com/Drywall-Popcorn.htm

I have an idea, after scraping off popcorn, to cover exposed drywall with textured paper to hide imperfections and, then, paint over it with matte finish.
Will it work?

In regards to my last post, keep in mind the spackle I used was quite wet. It just hit me that you could water down your spackle even more which might help soften the popcorn quicker and make it easier to spread. Let it dry a bit, even if it’s almost ‘cake’ like, it’s still moist underneath and will scrape off beautifully.

I saw several questions about removing “icing” type textured ceiling material (maybe plaster?), but I have not seen an answer to the problem. Does anyone know how to remove this type of ceiling, which is not popcorn? I scraped a bit off and I think there is drywall underneath.

I have only one room with popcorn ceiling in my recently purchased 1967 home!!! Thank goodness!! I am planning on doing knockdown texture on the walls AND ceilings but have read a few negative comments about diong the ceilings….right now I have that fine, gritty sandpaper look……any thoughts?

Hi Ernie,
I too am having the peeling paint issue, mine tho is with the primer, Lowes insisted this was the best primer I can buy, I believe it’s called Gripper, however in some places, it just rolls right off the drywall. Because I painstakingly sanded to such a smooth finish, I’m resistent to finish priming until I can find out wht the problem is.

Who? Me? I don’t know anybody by that name… 🙂 Sorry for not responding to the comments for a few days. I’ve been very busy lately with a lot of non popcorn-related distractions. For the last few months I’ve been doing very little besides working, eating, sleeping, and writing. I’m working on a book about website design…and that has been eating up all my free time. Honestly, I don’t know how I became the king of popcorn ceiling removal. I’m just your typical first-time homeowner with huge remodel goals and a tiny budget. Somehow though, this little tutorial I wrote up gets 150 unique views a day. I’ve been happy to see the discussion that’s going on here in the comments, but I don’t think a blog comment list is all that conducive to community and conversation, so I’ve just registered popcornforum.com where I’ll setup a forum soon to host all this info. My plan is to go through all the comments and break them up into topics like Questions, Tips, Stories, Asbestos Concerns, etc… There’s a lot of good information here and it deserves a good home. It may be a few weeks out though, so in the mean time, hold tight to your scrapers and sanding poles and I’ll try to answer questions as I can. Thanks to all of you who have taken on the questions of others! You guys and gals are a huge help!

How much does it cost to hire an asbestos abatement professional + repainting the whole ceiling? Anyone knows a Per square foot rate?

HI
After a couple of recent hurricanes in my area I lost parts of my popcorn ceilings. Right now I only have drywall nailed up which hasn’t been finished. I would like to just skip everything and put up a wood ceiling but, wondered it I should scrape off the rest of the popcorn (I have vaulted ceilings) or if I could just place the wood over it? My friend and her husband just finished removing all of the popcorn ceilings in their house and she told me what a nightmare it was so I guess I’m looking for the easy way out. Any thoughts?
Thanks

See my earlier posts. We removed the textured ceiling the same way as removing a popcorn ceciling. We saturated the plaster with a solution of soap and warm water and then scraped it off with a putty knife. Actually, it was a lot easier than we anticipated.

As for the “cardbox” walls, we used the Zinssr Gardz proudct, then a skim coat, another application of Gardz, then paint. It is certainly time consuming to apply multiple treatments, but it was 100 percent worth it.

Congratulations on making it all the way to the bottom Bob! The amount of raw information here and the difficulty of finding what you’re looking for is precisely why I setup popcornforum.com. Rather than posting comments here that will likely get lost in this sea of information, anybody can go to the forum and post a new tip, story, question, asbestos concern, etc…I’ve even set it up so that you can post anonymously which means that you don’t even have to register or enter any personal information. It’s a much better way to make yourself heard and get feedback.

Ok, now that I’ve got that bit out of the way, I’ve heard from a few people who have scraped their popcorn without wetting it, but is that your last step? You just scrape the kernels off and call it a day? I image if you did that you would have some places where you would see the darker gray color of the raw drywall.

Great site!! doe anyone know square footage price-range, to remove popcorn and knockdown ceilings. Thanks Bill

Has anyone considered that it might be simpler in some rooms to just hang new drywall over the top of the old ceiling? Depending on how many fixtures, vents, etc. you would have to adapt, might save a lot of the headaches.

Hey, great site… lots of info. I have three rooms to remove “texture” from in my newly bought house. So I’ve decided to try different ways when doing each room… unless of course, one way just seems to work flawlessly.

I just finished the first room last week. I’m not exactly sure if its “popcorn” or just heavily textured paint… but what really annoys me is that the texture wasn’t applied uniformly and literally looks like someone just threw up globs of texture in spots around the ceiling that is relatively flat. so in this instance, i decided to scrape down some of the texture after wetting it… which for me was NOT as easy as some of these post made it seem… maybe bc there was paint on it? nothing came off in strips or flakes… i just kind of dented the higher “peaks”.

after i knocked down what i could, than i started the job of what i guess is called “skin coating” the ceiling with LOTS AND LOTS of joint compound. Starting out, I wanted to get a”smooth” finish… although i soon realized my joint compound application skills were obviously not at that level… so i eventually decided to go for an obviously textured look… where you could see the putty knife swirls and scrapes. my room of about 15×12 took me about 8 hours to “skin coat” (after about two hours of “trying” to scrape off the texture)

after everything dried, the “stucco” like look wasn’t half bad actually… although not the smooth ceiling i originally wanted… but it was MUCH better than the spotted lunar surface that was my ceiling before. now it just looks like one of those old plaster ceilings. i intend to now seal the whole thing with a coat of primer and then regular white paint… and i think ultimately it will look pretty good, i hope.

my one concern…. if someone could answer this is… someone asked if throwing up this much joint compound is going to be problematic in the future…. is this stuff gonna fall down?? Thanks!

does the popcorn have to come off in sheets… or can it just be knocked off the surface and re-textured?

This site is…well….helpful and hilarious. I am closing on a condo in So.Cal that was built in 1965.I too, like previous writers, will have a window of time where my palace of popcornification will be vacant. Want the vile stuff off-but may just hire someone. My arms/shoulders hurt just reading all this. Tho my pocketbook will hurt instead.
Mark

Just thought I would give my 2 cents. I scraped my bedroom, and then used joint compound to give it a slight texture in less than two hours. Joint compound works great, as this is almost the same thing they use for knock down texture.I have seen it used as texture for walls, and have seen no problems with cracking, or peeling off. But I would not apply it directly over popcorn, as it will crack if put on too thick, and possibly come off years down the road.
I am about to do my cathedral ceiling in my living room, but I am going to put up 14 drywall directly over the popcorn. People will tell you 14 is too thin for a ceiling, but its not if you plan to install it directly over an existing drywallplaster ceiling. 14 is much lighter, and easier to work with. Many people do not consider the extra weight they are adding to the ceiling when they use thicker drywall. It is very easy to put up 14 drywall over an exisiting ceiling, and really makes less of a mess than scraping, even though the jointsnail hole areas will need to be sanded.
They make a drywall sander that can be attached to a shop vac, and does very well at sucking up the sanding dust. I have done drywall for 10 years, and if you take your time, you will have a nice, smooth ceiling, and Its really easy to work with. If you have a small room, then scrape! White flat paint hides most imperfections, and should be used over any kind of staingloss finish. The darker, glossier the paint you use, the more you will notice imperfections.

After 200 amazing comments/suggestions/tips etc it’s time to close the comments. See the end of this blog post for more details. If you want to share your experience(s), please do so in the popcornforum. You don’t need a login or password to post there, so it’s just as easy as leaving a comment on here used to be. Thanks everybody!!!