Removing Popcorn Ceiling (The Nursery, part 1)

My wife and I agree, this ugly ceiling has got to go

Tools Required:	Materials Required:
Scraper or Putty knife	Spray texture
Paint brush	Paint
Plastic Sheeting/Covering material
Face mask/respirator
Tape
Spray bottle (with water)
Coveralls and gloves

Our son is on his way to making his grand entrance in to the world.  He'll be here two very short months.  His room is so not ready.  The room my wife and I are turning into a nursery has been pretty much left untouched since we moved in.  Mostly it's been an storage room for things we hadn't found a spot for or had the time to give to Goodwill.

I had a spare weekend and wanted to start the renovation on the room.  Our plan is to replace the carpet, scrape the popcorn off the ceiling, install a closet organizing system and replace the old window with a dual pane, white vinyl trim one.

Today's guide will focus the removal of that 70's style acoustic "popcorn" ceiling.


Step 1: Get Tested

I'm sure you've heard about asbestos before.  It's that microscopic stuff that gives you Mesothelioma that went into building materials in the 50s - 70s.  It went into a lot of products, including acoustic ceiling texture.  The stuff was banned in 1978 but it still pops up in houses built well into the 80s.  My advise would be to get it tested no matter what year your house was built, because much like Texas, you don't mess with Asbestos.

Get your ceiling tested before you do any work on it.  There should be a local company or branch that will test for asbestos.  These companies typically also test for mold.  Just Google asbestos testing in your city.  Call the company and ask them their procedures and pricing for asbestos testing.  Some companies will send a tech to your home and some will suggest you scrape some off and bring it to them.

If the results of the test show there is no asbestos in your popcorn, you can remove it yourself.  If the tests come back "hot" or there is asbestos in your popcorn, your project has tragically come to an end even before it started.

If your ceiling has asbestos, don't panic.  It is completely harmless if you don't disturb it.  It's only a health hazard when it gets air born from being messed with (such as scraping it off because you think it's ugly and want it gone).

You have two options at this point.  Leave it be or higher an asbestos abatement contractor to dispose of it properly.  The company who tested it for you may be an abatement contractor, or at least, can refer you to one.

Fortunately for my wife and I, our popcorn tested negative.  So if you are also fortunate enough to be asbestos free, read on.

If not, DO NOT FOLLOW MY GUIDE.  HIRE AN ABATEMENT CONTRACTOR OR LET THE POPCORN BE!

Step 2: Protecting the Ground

If removing the popcorn is your only mission in this room, you'll want to put a layer of plastic or thick paper, or tarp, or ANYTHING to catch the popcorn and prevent it from getting on the ground.  This stuff is messy and you'll never get it off the floor or out of the carpet no matter how diligent you are in clean up.  The more OCD DIY'r will even tape the cover to the walls, cover the walls with the plastic sheeting and seal off the HVAC/ducting...I'm lazy, so I didn't do this.

REAL Step 2: Remove existing carpet/flooring etc

IF you're doing a total room renovation, before you put the the ground covering down, you'll want to consider removing the existing floor and bring it down to the sub floor.

For us, the first order of business was to rip out all the old, nasty carpet.  To do that, just grab a corner and start pulling.  Cut it into smaller pieces if you need to make it more manageable.

Once all the carpet has been removed, you'll want to pull up underlayment.  Since we're going to put in new carpet, I left the tack strips in place since they were in good condition.  If you're going to tile, hardwood or laminate, you'll need to pull these up.

For those of you with laminate or hardwood flooring, after you pull it up, just pull up any layers you have until you see the sub floor plywood or concrete.

Now that you have your sub floor exposed, take a pair of pliers and remove any objects stuck in the sub floor such as nail, staples or splinters.

Nice and exposed sub floor

For our project, I didn't have any extra space to store some of the furniture so I left it in, cut the carpet around it, then moved the furniture onto the sub floor before removing the last of the carpet.

Step 3: Cover the (sub) floor *Refer to step two*

Step 4: Covering more stuff

Grab your plastic sheeting, coveralls and mask, it's time to cover more stuff up.

Take some plastic sheeting and cover up any furniture you can't remove from the room (In our case, the dresser and crib).

Next, wrap up the ceiling fan and drapes.  These will be somewhat challenging, but wrap them up good and tight and tape them shut so no annoying popcorn chunks will get stuck on them.

my neighbors saw our drapes covered and though it was my wife's wedding dress

Now cover yourself. Put on your respirator, get into your coveralls and seal it up nice and good.  It was 80 degrees when I did this, so I jumped into the coveralls in just my boxers (you'll be doing some sweating in this thing; it doesn't breath so when you're done, you'll be swimming in your own sweat - sorry no selfies on this).

Step 4: Start spraying and scraping

Once everything, and I mean everything is completely covered it's time to start the hard stuff; the spraying and scraping.

Any hard flat object can get the job done, even a small putty knife (it would take FOREVER). Hardware stores sell ceiling scrapers that attach to painting sticks and have bags that catch the popcorn as it falls, but I've never had much luck with them.  This apparatus isn't very strong and most of the popcorn misses the catch bag for me.  So I actually use a floor scraper (used to scrape up tile, mortar and such).  It's very sturdy and works like a charm.  It might be akin to bringing a fire hose to a garden hose fight, but hey like Tim Taylor always said, "more power." 

My overkill ceiling scraper

Take your water bottle and squirt a lot of water onto a small area of the ceiling (about two square feet). Get it wet, really wet.   Let it soak in for a minute or two before you actually start scraping.You want it to be so wet that it's soggy.  The goal here is to get it so saturate with water than when you scrape, noting becomes airborne and every particle of the popcorn plops to the ground like clay.

To scrape the ceiling; place the blade of the scraper near parallel to the ceiling and push into the popcorn like this:

Scrape the area you saturated with water down until the drywall is exposed.  There will be a white rectangular pattern across the ceiling underneath the popcorn.  This is they drywall tape/mud that conceals the nails and screws the secures the drywall to the joists in the ceiling.  Don't try to scrape this off, you'll just tear into the drywall.

Drywall with tape and mud

Once you've finished with this two by two section, saturate the next section as before, allow to soak in, then scrape.  Repeat until the entire ceiling has been stripped down the the drywall.

Be careful when you scrape, if the scraper is not aligned properly to the ceiling, the corners of the blade will dig into the drywall and cause an unsightly gouge like this:

To avoid these gouges, keep the blade perfectly flush with the ceiling, or "round out" the edges of the blade with a file or rasp

If you're like me and gouge the hell out of your ceiling, you'll need to sand the gouges down with some sandpaper and put a thin layer of drywall patch over it to get it flush with the intact drywall again.

Take the scraper and put the blade perpendicular to the ceiling and put one edge in the corner. Put pressure into the corner and scrap out the corners along the perimeter of the room.  This will remove any dangling popcorn chunks that are still hanging on for dear life.

Now you ceiling should look like this:

And your floor should look like this:

Step 5 (Optional): New texture

If you want to put a new texture on the ceiling, apply it now (presumably you'll use orange peel or knockdown patterns and not put new acoustic texture on - which is still an option).  There a few texture options here.  If you're really motivated, you buy a drywall hopper, put some "mix it yourself mud" in it and spray it onto the ceiling.  You can also purchase the small spray cans and use those. They operate like spray paint.  Just point and spray.  Be sure to follow the manufacturer's instructions, as they slightly vary from brand to brand.  Your third option is to leave it as is and have a flat ceiling. Without adding new texture.  I opted for the small cans of orange peel because I didn't want to invest in a hopper system (nor do I have room in my workshop to store it).

Step 6: Painting

You'll be painting the ceiling next so protect the wall with some painter's tape.  Tape off the tops of the walls at their corner with the ceiling.  Make sure the edge of the tape is as tight to the ceiling as possible.

Once you have the perimeter of the room taped off, paint away at the ceiling.  A roller would probably be the easiest to use for the bulk of the ceiling and a small hand brush for the edges.

Once you've finished painting, peel off the tape and trash it.

Step 6: Clean Up

Now look at the mess you've made.  It's clean up time.    Carefully remove the plastic that's covering the drapes and furniture and put them in on the plastic ground cover (and piles of popcorn).  Take all the plastic sheeting you used to protect the ground and carefully bundle it up so it traps all the popcorn inside itself and stuff it into a garbage bag.  Repeat this process for all the plastic ground covering.  Now carefully and slowing get out of your covers and put them in the garbage bag as well.

Put this bag in another garbage bag so it's "double bagged" and dispose of it.

Use a shop vac to vacuum up any popcorn that escaped your well thought out capture plan.  Spray any surfaces that got popcorn on then with water or cleaning product and wipe them up with a rag.

Step 7: Enjoy your new ceiling