STEP 1 — THE SHOPPING LIST:

My house is older so I assumed asbestos and went from there. I bought one of those full body coveralls (sorry, didn’t have to the stones to go guerrilla like Jason and Amy) — 10 bucks at Home Depot, asbestos rated respirator — about 40 bucks at Home Depot, a few pairs of rubber gloves with extended forearms for extra coverage — 99 cents each for bags of two at Big Lots, an old towel from the closet to wipe off your shoes, 4 bags of plastic drop cloths — 89 cents at Big Lots, some ventilated goggles — 3 bucks at almost any hardware store, a cheap plastic pump sprayer — 8 bucks at Home Depot and a cheap, wide taping knife, a 12″ one at any hardware store — 6 bucks. If you want to scrimp, the taping knife, sprayer and drop cloths are essential. You can get disposable respirators, too, for much less but why take a chance with your lungs? A sturdy step ladder which allows you to scrape level, not “up”, one of those rubber 32-gallon cans lined with a thick plastic bag and a good radio will also make your life easier. Anyway, get your tools, now you’re set.

STEP 2: Start EARLY. Quiet Saturday morning’s are good. Move as much furniture as you can out of the room, or move it to the center. Cover the floor and anything left behind with drop cloths, it WILL get dirty if you don’t cover it. Turn off all electricity to the room, remove any ceiling fixtures and mask all light switches, outlets, etc. Don’t worry about windows, they won’t come into play.

STEP 3: Fill your pump sprayer with warm tap water. No detergents and/or solvents are necessary.

STEP 4: Hop up on your ladder and beginning with a corner start spraying the ceiling with water in manageable rectangles or squares (3′x6′, 4′x4′ etc.). Moisten it well. You want it wet, but not dripping. The popcorn will change color slightly as it takes on water, giving you a good visible guide when as to when it’s wet. Let it soak five minutes. Check your e-mail, finish that muffin, coffee, whatever. While you’re working it’s also a good idea to spray ahead to your next “work square” to get it softening while you scrape.

STEP 5: Take your putty knife/trowel/homemade scraper tool and get to work. Scrape at a shallow angle with moderate force — this isnt’ jazzercise — and the stuff will fall off like wedding cake frosting. Keep your scraping in front of you — it’s easier on the arms and shoulders and keeps you from turning yourself into an asbestos Chia Pet. I trail my scraping tool with a small lined trash can and the popcorn drops right into the can. When the can gets heavy, just dump it into the 32 gallon can. That’s it! Once you get the hang of scraping you’ll figure out how to do it so nothing is left behind. My ceiling is plaster underneath and was quite smooth so I had a minimum of repair to do afterwards, just filling small cracks with caulk/joint compound, etc. One 15′x15′ room took me about an hour or so to scrape, and that was with a 4 inch scraper! If you get arm weary take a break, eat lunch, rest, whatever. Keep all the sludge well moistened and dust won’t be a problem. And remember the stuff sticks to your shoes so beware of tracking it through the house. Wipe your shoe bottoms with the wet towel or use extra drop cloths to plan to your exits!

STEP 6 (Optional): Beer. Chips. Salsa. Ol�.

That’s it. Yeah, it’s unglamorous work, but it goes really quickly and the results are ridiculously rewarding. Plan it right and cleanup will be a minimum. It changes a room from “Boogie Nights” to “Sense and Sensibility” in just one afternoon. Now get your shopping list together and get to work!

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!