A1A Popcorn Ceiling Removal

Even if the test results are negative for the presence of asbestos, it’s not advisable to straightly start off the removal process. Of course, space preparation is necessary, but before going to all the tasks of preparing the space, you must carry out a scrape test. Start small by trying to scrape a little portion from your wall. Try it as is (dry) first and then, try it with the texture dampened with water. In some cases, taking it off as dry will be easy. But, in a majority of cases, wetting will simplify the process.

Note, if the water you spray doesn’t seem to be soaking in and/or softening the popcorn texture, it means that the ceiling has been painted or the paint was mixed with the texture blend. In such cases, the wetting process will not be of any help, and you need to consider an alternate option.

Luckily, the popcorn ceiling removal process does not require any specialized tools and you would probably have them at home. The essentials list should have the following tools:

Garden sprayer   /   Putty knife   /   Drop Cloths   /   Rosin paper   /   Painter’s tape   /   Ladder   /   Safety glasses   /   Dust mask   /   Floor scraper   /   Mud pan

As mentioned earlier, getting off a popcorn ceiling is a messy project. Rather than, cleaning up the mess after completing the process, carrying out the preparations well before starting the job is advisable. It will save both your time and effort. Cover the flooring, as well as walls with drop cloths. In this line, we would recommend you use plastic drop cloths over canvas ones because water that is sprayed can penetrate through the canvas material.

More importantly, cleanup is much easier with your plastic clothes. All you need to do is to just wrap it up and put it in the bins. Here, you are advised to leave your drop cloths as such after removing your popcorn ceiling, so as to make them catch up on all the mess that may be resulting from repairing or sanding the ceilings later on.

Although it seems enough to cover all furniture with plastic drop cloths, it’s not actually enough. In order to prevent all the mess you may have to clean later on, you are advised to remove all the furniture, including your wall hangings from the workspace. Keeping the room free from furniture will also prevent any unprecedented falls or accidents that may occur when you move the ladder around the room. This will also save you time as you will not have to check for the way and/or move your furniture to get the clearance each time. Only in the cases where removing everything out of the room is not possible, do you need to try clustering them and covering them with plastic drop cloths.

When the above important preparation steps are completed, turn to your heating and cooling systems in the room. Make sure to turn them off before starting your popcorn removal process. The ceiling vents in the room must be removed. Cover those with plastic. Now, turn off the power supply to the room and remove any lights or paddle fans that are hanging there. Finally, cover all the wall outlets, as well as switches with plastic, and seal them with tape. To make your cleanup process easier, you can consider covering the floor with rosin paper. While doing so, you must overlap the sheets and tap them together.

As mentioned earlier, to make the scraping process easier and to prevent any dust clouds in the room, the wetting process is recommended. To do this, you will need a garden sprayer to spray the popcorn ceiling with water. Once this is done, leave the ceiling as is for about fifteen minutes. This is to allow the ceiling to get completely soaked in.

However, in the process, you need to remember that a light misting is sufficient because too much water could destroy your drywall. You need to spray your ceiling again only if you see that the texture has not softened even after fifteen minutes.
As said above, if the texture has been painted or paint has been mixed with the texture blend, the water will not penetrate. This is why it’s important to perform a simple scrape test.

If you see that the texture has been painted, then you can be able to do dry scraping at first, which will help you expose at least some of the unpainted popcorn that can be then removed with wet scraping.

On the other hand, if you see that the paint has been added to the texture mix then you may have to dry scrape the entire ceiling or just coat it with a new drywall.

Using a floor scraper or a wide-bladed tool, slowly scrape off the popcorn texture. While doing so, take care not to gouge your drywall while at the same time taking care not to tear away the drywall joint tape. To make the process easier, you need to scrape only a small portion at a time. The ideal size to cover at a time will be 4 X 4 feet. It’s because if you try to work on a larger area, the texture may dry before you complete the scraping process.

So, work out on a smaller portion at a time and then, move on to the other regions. If the texture has dried up before completing the process, you can re-spray the area with water and wait for ten or fifteen minutes before continuing. Once the scraping is done, remove any residual materials using a putty knife. Make sure nothing gets into the corners.

During the scraping process, you are suggested to make use of a mud pan to catch the scraped-off popcorn before hitting the floor. This way, you are preventing it from spreading all around the room when you walk or move your ladder around the room. Also, you can utilize the edge of this mud pan to clean off the scraper when it’s overloaded with wet popcorn.

Once you have completed the scraping process, you must be able to view some of the sheetrock coming via the part of your ceiling. But, you need not worry about this as it’s perfectly fine as long as the surface is smooth. However, you are recommended to sand down the whole ceiling, especially if the original texture wasn’t even. Sanding down will help you achieve a perfect finished look.

If you were able to chip away at some part of the drywall while scraping, the repairing process will be simple. Using a joint compound and tape, repair the drywall area. You must leave this compound to get dried up. It will take around 24 hours to dry. After it gets dried, sand down the entire ceiling again to get a smooth finish.

For refinishing, prime and paint the ceiling with your preferred color. When the ceiling is completely dry, you can start the cleanup process by rolling up and wrapping the plastic sheets and dumping them into the trash. This is how you can get rid of the outdated, not-so-good popcorn ceiling from your property.