OMG Popcorn Ceilings

I had no idea that ceilings were so complicated. First of all ceilings are made with drywall (seems pretty obvious). What I didn't know is that you can't just simply paint unfinished drywall and expect perfect ceilings. To make a ceiling that is flat (meaning no texture) actually requires a lot more work and expense, especially if you are paying a professional. So what most people did in the 80's and 90's when they had drywall ceilings was to go the cheap and easy rout which is "popcorn ceilings." To popcorn a ceiling you just spray this stuff up there on plain drywall (no prep) and it bubbles and your ceilings are done. You don't even have to paint a popcorn ceiling. Well our cute house had mostly popcorn ceilings...

Here is an example of popcorn...

We got a quote that it would be $3000 for a guy to remove the popcorn and make the walls flat, or $1000 if we did all the removal and the professional made the walls flat.  Um no thanks...we decided to do it ourselves (DIY)!

The process goes a little something like this:

Materials - sprayer or spray bottle (we borrowed one with a hand pump from a friend), floor scraper, hand scrapers, loud music, ladders, and scaffold.

First thing we did was pray that the ceilings weren't painted. We heard nightmare stories about painted popcorn ceilings. People told us to just forget it and just re-drywall everything (also a pricey and time consuming endeavor). If the walls are not painted then things were supposedly supposed to be much easier.

Then we pumped our water pumper and sprayed plain water onto a section of the ceiling.

Then we waited a few minutes...

Finally we took a long handled floor scraper and ran it over the wet area. The popcorn fell off like butter! Hallelujah!!!

Then we repeated this process in the entire upstairs, and downstairs rooms...

I did all the edges and David did the middle

 I'd say the only disagreeable part of all this was when I had to hold a ladder in place while David did the vaulted entry ceilings, the result was that I was right under the storm of falling popcorn and it seemed to get everywhere. In my shirt, down my shorts, and all in my hair...I had to brush my hair for 15 minutes just to get it all out.

The next step for making beautiful new ceilings was mudding. So to make a ceiling look perfect you have to fill in all the dents and divots we made from the scraping. You take "mud" and you slop it on a big spatula and you fill in those holes to make the dents go away. We did this in every room, over every crack! We don't have any pictures of this because it was done very late at night.

After that we rented a drywall sander. Also no pics sorry. But it looks like a giant elephant nose you stick up on the ceiling and sand everything smooth.

The last thing to do was paint! We chose a color called Swiss Coffee and the ceilings look professionally done. Swiss Coffee

Check out those flat ceilings.