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Scraping Your Own Popcorn Ceilings – It’s a Messy Job, but Someone’s Gotta Do It!

Many of you guessed correctly that I would be scraping my own popcorn ceilings.

It wasn’t hard to do, but it also isn’t for the bad neck or bad back sufferers. Normally I hire out this job — but because our laundry room is so small — it seemed silly to pay someone else to do the work. Now that it is done, I’m really glad I decided to tackle this project. The sense of accomplishment and the resulting smooth ceiling is HUGE!

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you live in a house that was built around 1978, take several small samples of your ceiling and test it for asbestos before you begin. Even though the cutoff date for asbestos in popcorn texture was 1978, the inventory could still be bought from store shelves well into the 1980’s. Do yourself and your family a favor, If you have asbestos popcorn contact a professional who is trained in asbestos removal to handle the job. If you want to learn more, you can read more about our experience with asbestos remediation.

 

Materials:

(I’ve included affiliate links for your convenience. I earn a small percentage from a purchase using these links. There is no additional cost to you. You can read more about affiliate links here.)

Difficulty: Medium Hard

The scraping is relatively easy if you have a popcorn ceiling that hasn’t been painted numerous times. The hard part is looking up for an hour and also finessing the joint compound to look smooth. But, if you can ice a cake, you can do this!

Preparation:

Remove any light fixtures (Be sure to turn off the power to any light fixture before removing it.) Put the wire nuts back on the exposed wires and cover the fixture box with a plastic and tape.

You must — I repeat — you MUST tarp off the entire room. This project is messy and in the end it will be so much easier to roll up the tarp and throw away the removed popcorn.

Tape the plastic at the very top of the walls. Tape any  seams in the overlapping sheets of plastic.

Removing the Popcorn:

Fill the garden sprayer with water. Put on your dust mask and eye goggles. Spray the entire ceiling. Throughly wet every square inch.

Allow the water to soak into the popcorn. After 15 minutes, spray the entire ceiling again. Wait a few minutes and then test an area to see if the popcorn will come off. When it’s ready, that stuff will just slide right off as you push the spackle knife along the ceiling.

I bought this floor scraper because my friend Sandra (Sawdust Girl) mentioned that it might make the job easier.

Once I tested the corner with the spackle knife, I got so excited by how easy it was coming off that I never used the scraper. If I were to scrape a larger room, I would definitely use the floor scraper next time.

All the popcorn will fall into your plastic tarping. Talk about seeing the fruits of your labor:

Once all the popcorn has been sloughed off, take a damp sponge and wipe off any remaining pieces and the film that is left. Be careful not to get the drywall paper too wet or it will rip.

Inspect the ceiling for any gouges, holes, or imperfections. Use spackle to fill any of them.

Spreading  joint compound (or spackle) over large areas that need smoothing:

  1. Dip spackle knife into joint compound.
  2. Spread the compound over imperfections in the drywall.
  3. Continue spreading the joint compound over the drywall in the same direction until the entire “line” has been covered.
  4. Wipe off excess joint compound back into the bucket. Gently drag the spackling knife along the joint compound perpendicular to the direction that it was applied. Resist dragging the knife over a 2nd time. It is okay if you have some raised sections, they will sand down. Holes and dents in the joint compound are no good and you will need to spread more onto the ceiling.

Allow the spackle to dry and sand it smooth with the sandpaper.

Wipe off the ceiling with a damp sponge.

Prime and Paint the Ceiling:

Using a paint roller on an extendable handle, roll primer onto the entire ceiling.

Allow the primer to dry.

Lightly sand the ceiling to knock down any imperfections.

Wipe off any sanding dust with a damp sponge.

Paint the ceiling with two coats of a flat paint in your color choice. If you want a more thorough tutorial on painting ceilings, read this post.

Personally, I like using an ultra bright flat paint like Valspar. It has the best light reflection ability.

After all your hard work, pat yourself on the back and then carefully roll up the tarps and take out the trash. That will be one heavy bag!

Coming up next week: Installing the FlowWall System and a giveaway! You don’t want to miss it.

P.s. Thank you for all your prayers and kind words while my son was sick. He is finally feeling better and went back to school yesterday after three weeks. We are fairly certain that he had norovirus and it just sent his system into a tailspin. Thank goodness for hospitals and modern medicine!

75 replies
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  1. Melinda
    Melinda says:

    We have scraped both bathrooms and a bedroom in our houses. Water bottle and scrapper. Fixed the gouges and nail holes. Primed and let dry 24 hrs. bubbled and peeled in spots. Sanded again, mudded, sanded, primed. Bubbled and peeled again. One more time…. this time primer seemed to do fine. let dry 24 hrs and painted. BUBBLED and Peeled in spots. What is going on here. Our home improvement store even thought we had bad primer and paint, so they gave us 2 gallons each. Valspar, did the same thing. Someone said when the house was built in the 90s that maybe the sheetrock got wet from rain and the builders used it anyway. Any suggestions. We are at the breaking point here

    Reply
  2. Lisa
    Lisa says:

    I should mention, I scraped it dry and wiped remainder with wet rags after. This part takes forever, but you could try to shop vac it wet.

    Reply
  3. Lisa
    Lisa says:

    When I removed my popcorn ceiling, I taped a wide putty knife to my shop vac and scraped away. Hardly any mess!

    Reply
  4. zt
    zt says:

    we have gross popcorn. wish I had the patience to do this myself. I would probably scrape off a bit then get tired of doing it and leave. :/ hahaha. who wants to depopcorn my house? lol

    Reply
  5. Carol
    Carol says:

    My husband too thinks you have to texture the whole ceiling he is doing it right now. I took the popcorn off our small bathroom today, trial run and man did I need a trial run. My tape and plastic started falling off the wall after I wet it down! Can you help??? What did I do wrong I used med heavy plastic and frog tape. Help, I am afraid to do any other rooms now!

    Reply
  6. jet
    jet says:

    thank you for this great diy of yours, i’m living for the first time in such a house with those stupid ceilings-S
    It’s still white, but one day i must ad a new layer of paint;-D
    it’s not tooo big those popcorns like the ceilings of my mum, but… i didn’t liked it when i saw that the housecooperation had done this.
    So t hank you for the sharing to come ritt off those ceilings;XD

    Reply
  7. Tundra
    Tundra says:

    I wish I had found this sooner, before I was over half finished with my ceiling.
    After I read about the vinegar/HOT water/Dawn mixture mentioned above, I mixed some up and went to work on the rest of my ceiling. It is working, even after being painted.
    Spray the mixture on the ceiling and wait about 10 to 15 minutes, be patient!
    Then scrap. I also agree with a rounded edge scraper as I noticed I was gouging the sheetrock.
    Now I have the bedrooms to do and I will have removed all the popcorn from my home.

    Reply
  8. Pam Chance
    Pam Chance says:

    Pretty Handy Girl-I am planning to take down two small bathrm popcorn ceilings. Home was built in 1983 but tested (negative) for asbestos. I have two concerns not addressed in your wonderful tutorial. 1-tape is coming loose. Are there newer ways to tape the wall at the ceiling other than paper tape, mud, sponge & sand?? 2-There is a trianglar piece of sheet rock in one corner of shower. Apparently it was just taped over and when I removed wall paper, it revealed the “GAP.” The triangaular shaped gap is about 6″ long by 1″ at the widest part. Can it be patched in some way without replacing the entire section of dry wall? Thanks for emailing your reply.

    Reply
    • Brittany (aka Pretty Handy Girl)
      Brittany (aka Pretty Handy Girl) says:

      Pam, some of the tape on our ceiling was coming loose too. But, only small 1″ and 2″ edges. I cut out the pieces and then mudded over the area to smooth it. It sounds like you will need to cut a piece of drywall to fit that triangle, but if there is nothing to screw it into, you’ll probably need to cut a larger square, or follow this tutorial: http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Repair-a-Large-Drywall-Hole-80715859

      I’ll warn you, it is a little tricky and it will be hard to get it “perfect.” So, don’t beat yourself up if you need to hire a professional just to get that corner perfect.

      Reply
  9. Michelle
    Michelle says:

    I think that there should be a larger disclaimer here about preliminary asbestos testing of the acoustical ceiling plaster (“popcorn ceiling”) as it is extremely hazardous and can cause mesothelioma and/or lung cancer. There is a large latency period between exposure and sickness, but exposure in any amount is not deemed okay. Because I have personally seen the aftermath of occupants doing their own removal only to contaminate their whole house, or if containment is set up, just their lungs. I cannot stress enough the time, energy, money, and heartache that can be avoided by simply collecting a few samples. According to the EPA, for surfacing material (which “popcorn ceiling” is) there is a minimum of 3 samples that need to be taken (up to 7 if there is a large amount of the material. The number of samples is dependent on the square footage of the material) It is highly recommended that you contact a professional to collect the samples though as the collection of samples involved releasing potentially hazardous fibers into the air. The small mask you show in the photo is not enough to protect lungs from asbestos fibers which are extremely small.

    Reply
  10. Melissa
    Melissa says:

    We did this in our home as well after knocking some walls down. It is impossible to match old popcorn texture. If you have thick paint you can make a mixture of 1 parts vinegar to 5 parts HOT water and 5 tbsps of dawn dish detergent. Spray the ceiling thoroughly and let it soak and and scrape. Voila! The nice thing about the thick paint was that it held the popcorn together as it fell off! Lol!

    Reply

Trackbacks & Pingbacks

  1. […] Scraping Your Own Popcorn Ceilings – It’s a Messy Job, but Someone’s Gotta Do It! […]

  2. […] The key is to use the minimal amount of joint compound possible and carefully smooth it out. The Pretty Handy Girl Blog describes it as ‘icing a cake’ and we think this is about as accurate as it […]

  3. […] Scrape it off. If you spray the celling with water, you can loosen the texture, and scrape off the old popcorn. This is a messy, tedious process. If you have it done, it can cost hundreds of dollars to obtain a smooth surface again. This presentation shows the process in detail. […]

  4. […] and everyone seems to be on the same page in that it is an easy job but an extremely messy one. Pretty Handy Girl has one of the best tutorials I’ve seen out there.  She tackled her laundry room which is on […]

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