Popcorn Ceiling Removal

 

Anyone else spend the precious moments before going to sleep and after waking up staring up at that gross, dusty popcorn ceiling and wishing you could instead be looking up at a beautiful smooth white surface? No, just me?

Well, no matter what your level of “crazy” is when it comes to house projects, I think we can all agree that popcorn ceilings have no place in our houses and we curse the person who ever invented this horrible substance!! And while it takes a pretty serious amount of energy and effort (read: it’s freaking exhausting) to remove it, it’s actually pretty easy from a technical standpoint, and you can get at least one room done over a weekend if you put your mind to it.

Required Materials

• Safety glasses
• Face mask
• Gloves
• Asbestos test (stop right there if it comes back positive!!!!)
• Ladder
• Plastic sheeting
• Painters tape
• Handheld garden sprayer
• Large putty knife
• Joint compound
• Sanding pole with screens
• Microfiber towels
• White ceiling paint
• Paint roller with extension pole
• Paint pan
• Paint roller sponge things
• Paintbrush for cutting in corners and edges
• Any tools required for removing lights/ceiling fan/etc.
• Clothes and shoes you don’t care about seeing again

How to

1. Before you start the project, in fact before you even buy anything on the list above, get your ceiling tested for asbestos. Some local agencies provide this service at a reasonable cost which is probably the safest and most reliable way to find out whether your ceilings contain asbestos. Santa Barbara doesn’t do it for residential projects so I used a kit which I’ll link here. Mask up, spray the surface to make sure there is little/no dust, then take a sample of the ceiling from at least one spot but ideally a few in each room. Package it up, send it off, and wait for your results! If it comes back positive, call an asbestos certified contractor to do the removal – this stuff is extremely dangerous and while smooth ceilings are awesome, they are not worth compromising your health. If you’re lucky like us, the test results will be negative and you can go ahead with your project!
2. Empty the room you’ll be working in completely – you are about to be shocked by what a HUGE mess this project is, and you don’t want to subject yourself to even more cleaning by leaving stuff in the room. If you can do this project in an empty house before you even move anything in, that would be ideal! Unfortunately we didn’t have that foresight so we did our upstairs bedrooms one at a time and moved all the crap from one room into another. Luckily, the previous owners of our house had already done the downstairs so we didn’t have to worry about that.
3. Cover the floor with plastic sheeting and tape off any spots you want to keep clear of dust including closets, doors to other rooms, heating vents, outlets, etc. Windows optional – they will require some extra clean-up, but personally I think it’s worth it for the breeze and fresh air when you are sweating like a pig!
4. Hop on your ladder and start spraying the ceiling down with water. You can’t really spray too much… I would recommend spraying down the entire surface, then going back and doing it again before you start to scrape.
5. Using your large putty knife, scrape the popcorn right off the ceiling. SO SATISFYING. If it’s not satisfying and you’re working really hard to produce a still-lumpy surface, you probably need to spray more water. The popcorn should pretty much glide right off, and you want to expose the grey ceiling drywall underneath. Of course, if you totally drench it then the paper part of the drywall might start getting warped/torn, so make sure you are only really spraying the popcorn itself and not the uncovered ceiling.
6. When you’re done scraping the entire surface, wait for it to dry out a bit. Take this time to wipe down the walls which will probably be covered in popcorn goop which will be much harder to clean if left there to dry. Do not remove/clean up plastic sheeting at this time even though it will be tempting to do so when you are walking through popcorn-snow. The messiest part is yet to come!
7. Using your putty knife again, patch any holes or dips in the ceiling with joint compound. For the most part this was just the slightly exposed drywall nail holes from the original construction, plus a couple spots here and there where the putty knife had cut into the surface at a bad angle. Allow to dry completely – meaning you’re done for the day!
8. When the ceiling and patches are totally dried, use your sanding stick to smooth the entire ceiling surface. Obviously you’ll put a little more elbow grease into the rough patches, but it’s important that you sand the whole thing so that you have a uniform texture across the board.
9. Wipe down the entire ceiling (and probably the walls too, although you could do that later) with a damp cloth to get rid of all the drywall dust. Goggles would have been better than glasses for this step.
10. Paint the ceiling with beautiful bright white ceiling paint! Spend your next 12 hours cleaning drywall dust out of every crevice in your house, move the furniture back into place and then collapse on the bed to enjoy your beautiful new ceiling. Ahhhh…