I hate hate hate popcorn ceiling (although truth be told, I am trying to embrace the popcorn texture in our master bedroom…and I don’t cringe at the delicate popcorn on our high vaulted livingroom ceiling, but maybe that’s my poor eyesight).
I think popcorn-texture ceilings are one of those design ‘features’ that instantly makes a space look dated and UGLY…but it’s sooo much work to remove – not too terribly if it hasn’t been painted, but oh my, after it’s set with paint! And let me tell you, I have removed way too much of it (the ‘silver-lining’ is the amazing shoulder work out you get removing it!).
spraying and saturating sections about 3′ wide with water.
After all of these trials, although each of them certainly work (with effort and sweat!), I think the easiest and most effective method is saturation with water (not just spraying…lots and lots of water is key). Here are the details of the methods I’ve tried:
- just cover the damn texture with a new layer of drywall. Sure, this works but its expensive and time consuming! To my calculations and the way I work, I think this takes much more time than any other approach…going to the store to buy, cutting and hanging it all – ugh – taping and mudding and sanding… Of course, if you’re looking for a paneled or wood ceiling, this is a no-brainer!
- repainting, using new paint to soften the over-paint on the texture, and scraping while the new paint is soft – you need to scrap before the new paint completely dries but not before it has softened the original paint. I found this to be semi-effective – some of the texture scrapes off easily, but there is still a lot of texture that requires detailed scraping with a small 2″ trowel. Plus, the new paint is quite messy and an additional expense.
- coating with a paint remover to soften the over-paint: 1) using a caustic paint remover works very poorly as it evaporates quickly resulting in only small patches being workable; plus with it’s caustic nature, the scraping process becomes pretty scarey! 2) using a non-caustic paint remover works ok. I have used this with success on fairly large areas – coating it on sections, ~5’x5′ areas, and letting it set/work for 20-30mins while ensuring it doesn’t dry-out. This allows the texture to mostly scrape off, leaving some finer granular texture that can easily be skim-coated with a single thin layer of mudding compound.
- heavy heavy saturation with water to soften the over-paint and texture. This is the best method I have found yet. I had previously been unsuccessful with the water method on painted texture (I had tried this many times!) – but this is because I had used hand spray bottles which, evidently, didn’t provide the level of water saturation required to successfully seep through the paint. I am having great success with using water to saturate the ceiling, working in small sections of ~3’x10′ (being careful to not ruin the drywall and seams!). I use a large spray applicator, as you can see in the pics (I think this is for garden chemical application), let it soak for a few minutes, and hand scrape off large strips. Depending on the ceiling prep under the popcorn-texture (and I think likely the paint type and age), the texture may scrape off completely leaving the surface may be ready to paint, or leaving some small areas that require minor patching or thin skim coating with mudding compound.
I use a mudding hawk to catch the strips as I scrape them from the ceiling. You can see this ceiling scrapped smoothly – it needed only small patching prior to painting
I use a 6″ joint trowel which I find easily scrapes the texture off the drywall without missing portionsthe over-paint results in the texture holding together in strips rather than the messy crumbles and powder.
the beautiful results are worth the effort…I just keep that in my vision as I slog my way through the process!…sigh…I hope never to have to use this knowledge again…so sorry if you are having to, but I hope this helps!
have a beautiful week!
xo
shelley
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