Popcorn is for eating, not for ceilings!

Rennie Heuer

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Good grief I hate popcorn ceilings. Never-the-less, I've sworn to remove them from every room in my house, one ceiling at a time. Two rooms down, working on the third now. Can't wait to finish. For those doubters, pictures coming soon.:D
 
We had those things on every ceiling - even the kitchen(!) - in our first California house. It took several years to get the time and ambitions to get ALL OF IT removed. What a messy job! I feel your pain...
 
We have popcorn ceilings in most of the rooms in our house, but I figure we'll sell this place before I have the time or energy to re-do the ceilings. You're either a brave man, or a glutton for punishment, Rennie. :p
 
We don't see popcorn ceilings in the east so much. What we do have though, is 12"x12" tile or suspended ceilings. The old joke where I formerly worked used to be "Make every room in your house look like the basement - install a Armstrong ceiling! :rofl::rofl:

But I digress. How about inviting your new neighbors over for a movie night - and they can serve themselves popcorn!:rofl::rofl:

Oh, it's getting late and I'm telling really bad jokes - and laughing at them - time for bed.

Just dive in and get it done - that's a job that can't be done with any finesse.

Good luck,
Wes
 
We don't see popcorn ceilings in the east so much. What we do have though, is 12"x12" tile or suspended ceilings. The old joke where I formerly worked used to be "Make every room in your house look like the basement - install a Armstrong ceiling! :rofl::rofl:Wes
I grew up in NJ (exit 123, then, later, 88). The other thing we saw little of (though I think this has changes) is smooth walls - no texturing. I think drywallers back east took more pride in their work - and all those years of plaster got people used to smooth hard surfaces.:rolleyes:
 
We had those things on every ceiling - even the kitchen(!) - in our first California house. It took several years to get the time and ambitions to get ALL OF IT removed. What a messy job! I feel your pain...
Kitchen!?!? :eek:
Our kitchen and bath are done in a knock-down texture. Popcorn is just too susceptible to moisture to be used in those areas. I thought.:dunno:

When I get to the baths and kitchen I'll probably screw up some 1/4" sheet rock rather than try and skim the ceiling. Taking down the current ceilings is not an option as we have blown in cellulose insulation in the attic space. What a mess that would be!:eek::rofl:
 
Kitchen!?!? :eek:
Our kitchen and bath are done in a knock-down texture. Popcorn is just too susceptible to moisture to be used in those areas. I thought.:dunno:...

The kitchen was an absolute mess! It was the first (and worst) to remove. It had about thirty years of moisture and cooking grease embedded in it, and had been painted over several times. I think previous owner(s) used Kilz, or something similar, to seal in the mess prior to painting over. It was a real job to get it off,

The bedrooms, living room, etc. were better (easier), but still a lot of work and mess.

Have at it Rennie. I'm glad it's you, and not me (again) doing it!
 
You guys are lucky that you have the option of removing the popcorn ceiling. I have always lived in rented apartments in Los Angeles. Popcorn ceilings are very common in these aprtments. Now I have gotten used to them though.
 
I've got a lot of popcorn on our ceiling here.

I'd be interested in seeing your removal techniques. I hate the way the stuff looks...
 
What's funny is our house was built in the late 70's, during the last oil crisis and has a pretty low ceiling. It's completely covered in a thick popcorn coating.

I can imagine spraying with water and scraping. I can imagine what a mess it would be, but it would be nice to have a nice smooth ceiling...
 
What's funny is our house was built in the late 70's, during the last oil crisis and has a pretty low ceiling. It's completely covered in a thick popcorn coating.

I can imagine spraying with water and scraping. I can imagine what a mess it would be, but it would be nice to have a nice smooth ceiling...
Brent,

You are in EXACTLY the same situation as I am - mid 70's, 92.5" ceilings with 1/4" of popcorn. I did the master BR some years ago - took me lots of time - but it looks great. I scrape down to the paper - no primer under the popcorn - and do as little damage as possible. A spritz here, a scrape there - takes time. Then, using a sanding screen, I'll lightly go over the paper and try to remove any remnants of the old covering that would not yield to the scraper (A sharpend, stiff, 6" knife). Then I patch any uh-oh's and nearly every nail/screw head and touch up the joints. Then - are we there yet? - I'll do what is nearly a skim coat of the entire ceiling. Sand that smooth, go over again on any areas that need it, and sand again. Not there yet....

Then I give the entire thing a coat of Kilz. After that drys I'll inspect it for imperfections, sand, and maybe re-coat. Then I can lay on two coats of finish color.

Wow, I get tired just explaining it! :rofl:
 
I have no idea of what a pop corn ceiling is, what from all the post I imagine that is is some sort of celulose or styrofoam product that is sprayed on ceiling and walls and it is painted over.

I guess that the texture created was/is on trend, am I right?


Here there was a similar trend not for ceilings but for walls where one sprayed thick paint with low pressure if one had a paint pistol.

If not there were specially designed buckets with a handle and some sort of spining steel stripes that one made turn with a handle. Those stripes dipped into the paint then were bent against a bar and when liberated by flexing they spat the paint drops onto the wall. The texture obtained is called "gotelé"
I hope to have explained it well.

It was a common resource to disguise walls that were bumped, twisted or not flat and vertical. Getting rid of those it is also a nightmare. Some people just prefer to fill over the bumps and get a flat wall instead of removing them.
 
I have no idea of what a pop corn ceiling is, what from all the post I imagine that is is some sort of cellulose or Styrofoam product that is sprayed on ceiling and walls and it is painted over.
You are right on the money. :thumb:

If you've ever seen vermiculite - often used in the soil for potted plants to hold moisture - it's little balls of a Styrofoam like material about 2mm in diameter (hope that's right). It's sprayed from a hopper mixed with a joint compound like mix. Used to 'mass produce' ceilings that usually have only one coat of compound over the taped seams and nail/screw heads. It saves days of extra coats and sanding by the drywall team and hides a multitude of sins.
 
The 'Textured' walls are about the only way they do walls out here on the west coast. Anymore I think it's just the style, although I tend to think a large part of it is because it's probably faster and requires less skill than doing the job right....

55-050-64x100.jpg

In remodeling our old house, I needed to do some to patch up some walls where
1) We pulled out a cheap looking built in :dunno:
2) A dog ate a hole through the dry wall :huh:
3) A huge 20'x6' mirror fell off a wall :eek:

Oddly enough, it does take some skill to master the 'splatter' technique. It has to be thick enough, you have to splatter it on in just the right thickness, you have to wait just the right amount of time until you knock it down with a drywall knife...
 
Aw, that's a mild popcorn. I think the stuff on our ceilings has chunks more in the 3MM to 6MM range. At LOML's former house, I had to paint one of the bedrooms before she sold it. Smallish bedroom, but I think I used over 2 gallons of paint just on the popcorn ceiling alone. (It was very deep popcorn.) I started out trying to spray it with a small Wagner sprayer, and after giving up on the sprayer, it still took 3 coats or so with a long nap roller to finally get everything covered.

Toni, sometimes they also add small metallic flakes (glitter) to the spray, so there are sparkles in the ceiling, too. That makes it even more of a pain to paint.
 
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