Dilemma: Ugly Popcorn Ceilings!! How do you disguise them??

[bunnisa]

Well we just moved to TX and found a house we're going to put an offer on. But it has those nasty ugly tacky popcorn ceilings!!! Many of the houses we've looked at have them. They're just not that common where I'm from (MI) and I cannot STAND them.

Short of having someone scrape them (expensive and a HUGE mess), does anyone know of a creative way to disguise them? I'm thinking mainly for small spaces, like the dining room. (The vaulted ceiling in the family room would just be too difficult to disguise).

TIA!

Bethany
It's a Boy!
William Eric
6/03

[C99]

I think they use those nasty popcorn ceilings to disguise a bad job with the plaster. ;-)

[suribear]

Unfortunately they were all the rage some time ago, so acoustic ceiling removal is a big business!

See if you can find a handyman to remove it, retexture and paint - my friend found someone like that and it was a whole lot less. If you plan to remove it, do it before you move in (if you can) because it is a mess. I plan to do it soon, and we'll probably have to vacate the house for a little while.

I suppose you could paint it, but I've heard that once you paint it (if the problem is dirt - they pick up dirt like crazy), the ceiling will be a huge pain to remove (should you decide to do it later). I've also heard that they absorb a lot of paint.

Sorry this wasn't more positive - I've spent hours agonizing over mine LOL

Kris

[jec2]

Mirrors?!!!


LOL! just kidding. Really, I probably wouldn't be happy until it was all gone! Try and save your pennies and get the icky stuff removed. Also, if you can afford to do it before moving in, then do it so you don't have to deal with the mess down the road. None of this advice comes from experience, however, so feel free to ignore me :)

[new_mommy25]

My friend just bought a house recently and her and her DH scraped it themselves. She said it wasn't hard and it looks great. PM me if you want and I'll ask her how she did it.

[zen_bliss]

both my neighbors have scraped theirs (rental apts) and painted the smooth surface and it looks great. and they are by no means fussy people inclined to do a great job :) they just used one of those wide metal plastering spatulas and it came off in sheets. you might be pleasantly surprised that it's super easy if you try to do an inconspicuous area first.

[suribear]

I'm wondering... don't you have to retexture to match the walls?

I ask because everyone is telling me to do this, but neither of you mentioned it.
Or are the walls smooth? :)
Kris

[mteve]

My husband and I scraped our popcorn off, and despite the hard work and mess, it was well worth the effort (although we only live in a 950 square foot condo). The rooms are brighter and look taller! I have a few suggestions for you:

1) Consider scraping the ceilings yourself and then have someone else re-tape and plaster the dry wall, then prime and paint it yourself. We did the entire job ourselves, and I thought the biggest pain was repairing damaged dry wall seams with tape, plaster and repeated sandings (it is likely that the popcorn is covering up a very poor job on the drywall!).

2) You may want to get the popcorn checked for asbestos. Houses built before asbestos was outlawed may have asbestos in the popcorn (I think it's 1978, but you would want to verify that yourself). Although if you scrape it yourself, you might just proceed with the scraping and hope you don't have asbestos.

3) If you scrape it, here's how we did it: Buy lots of plastic sheeting to place on your floor. We used a plastic garden sprayer - a 3-5 gallon plastic portable tank with a sprayer - and sprayed a light coating of hot water on the popcorn before we scraped it.

4) I wouldn't worry about texturizing it to match the walls - ours looks really great with just flat latex paint.

5) Just remember - most people never look up!

Eve

[DebbieJ]

We had a plasterer come remove them as a side job. He textured it to match our wall texture, but he could have made it smooth if we wanted.

It looks SOOO much better. That popcorn is just a dirt magnet. Yuck.

We then caulked around the whole ceiling where it meets the wall and primed and painted ourselves.

As for the possibility of asbestos, it was "no ask, no tell" around here. If we'd have hired a removal company, it would have been OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive due to the possibility of asbestos. We were comfortable with the risk, so we went the cheap route.

~ deb
Mommy to my sweet boy
B born 12/03

[Melanie]

scraping isn't as pricey as I thought - we had it done...go for it before you move in!

[votre_ami03]

It really can be a DIY job. When my X & I bought our home he & his father (a former painter) scraped the popcorn off the DR & then textured all of my DR walls & ceiling w/a skip trowel. A 5 gal bucket of mud is about $10-12 & it's not that hard.

In fact, I scraped Nolan's ceiling when I was 7 mos pregnant. Other than my arms tiring out, it was no big deal. Squirt bottle of water, a metal scraper & shop vac the mess up.

You can also buy/rent a "Hopper gun" that you put the mud mix in to spray texture on your walls & ceiling. The messiest part is the texturing rather than the scraping. If you do DIY, when you retexture be sure to plastic everything & either remove or tape off your baseboards. The plaster/sheet rock mud is hard to get off once dry.


Christy, mommy to Nolan 7/22/03