Straight out of the 80's, our house came with this lovely stuff on the ceilings. Immediately I wanted to remove it!! Darrell, however, was not so keen on the idea of scraping a house with all vaulted ceilings. Since we have our current apartment until the end of June, we decided that we might as well do all the dirty work before we move all of our stuff in or it will never get done. Once we knew for sure we were getting the house, Darrell went to work trying to find out the "best practices" for getting popcorn off the ceiling. That's when we hit a bump in the road... Darrell read that we actually had to get our ceiling tested for asbestos prior to touching the ceiling. Since our house was built in 1983, the builders could have still used asbestos. Even though it was banned, builders could still use the asbestos until it "ran out" sometime in the later part of the 80's. Lovely.
After doing a little more research to find out who actually screens for stuff like that, we found Omni Environmental. They informed us that we needed to scrape off a small section of the ceiling and place the pieces in a sealed plastic bag. Just when I was all ready to get on a tall ladder and start scraping, we again had to wait. Of course you can get the results next day for a much higher fee, but we went for the 3-4 day option. Again more waiting. Four days later we found out that we in fact do not have any traces of asbestos in our house and the scraping finally began. Yay!!! :o)
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The first room we wanted to complete was the kitchen. We were a little nervous since we were doing this ourselves and had no idea what to expect. We took a little section in our kitchen window that is by the sink and sprayed it down with water. After letting it soak for just about a minute all the popcorn scraped right off! Now, its not exactly that easy [well parts were]. We figured out that using a Round-up garden sprayer was the best tool to wet down the areas we were scraping. Once it was soaked you literally just took the scraper and started scraping at the ceiling. You would reach down to the sheet rock and if you were not on one of the seams it would just fall right off. The seams look a little more TLC. After some trial and error, we found that doing an initial scrape and then wetting it a little more helped get a smoother end result. Obviously, you have to aim the water, because you don't want to have all the sheet rock soaked.
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It only took us about 2 hours to get the kitchen finished, oh, and of course 4 trips to Lowe's. I must say, don't forget the masks when you are doing something like this [that was on trip #4]. Such a mess!! We were smart and covered all of our cabinets that we just finished. This made the clean up easier/quicker, but the dust still gets everywhere.
Once it was scraped, we then had to decide what to do with it. In order to save money, we decided to fill any nicks or holes and sand down the area until it was smooth. We had some paint left over that we used for the cabinets, so while I was working one evening, Darrell got it all painted. It wasn't the most perfectly smooth ceiling, but it looked fine in the natural light. The problem was that when it got dark and we had the kitchen lights on, it showed all the flaws. We knew this really wasn't going to work in this area, especially in the living room with those tall ceilings.
We were lucky enough to have family come down to help us through the rest of the house. My brother, Scott and my cousin, Jason had just finished the semester and decided to make the trip down to Austin. So, what did I do? Put them to work! :o) I did at least encourage drinking beer while doing all of this. So basically we had 2 options for fixing the ceiling flaws, we could either rent a gun and shoot the texture up there or we could roll it on and use a sponge to show a small texture on the ceiling. We went with the latter of the two options.
Instead of jumping right into that, we rented scaffolding from the Home Depot so we could get all the other rooms scraped. Yes, our ceilings are that high. It is actually not a horrible price, but assembly is required. Because neither of our cars could obviously fit the equipment, or Scott's FJ, we had to rent a Home Depot truck to get it to the house. 3 days later we had the ceilings scraped and textured. The only thing left to do was paint. Let me tell you, the extension polls are amazing. Or if you'd rather not purchase one, you can also use your household broom poll on the roller as well.
We now have both the kitchen and the living room done. We found that the kitchen was a little easier to texture because we had already applied some paint to the area, which helped the putty stay on. We still have to do all of the rooms in the house and the bathrooms, but we are debating again to texture or not to texture... I guess we'll see!
After doing a little more research to find out who actually screens for stuff like that, we found Omni Environmental. They informed us that we needed to scrape off a small section of the ceiling and place the pieces in a sealed plastic bag. Just when I was all ready to get on a tall ladder and start scraping, we again had to wait. Of course you can get the results next day for a much higher fee, but we went for the 3-4 day option. Again more waiting. Four days later we found out that we in fact do not have any traces of asbestos in our house and the scraping finally began. Yay!!! :o)
.jpg)
The first room we wanted to complete was the kitchen. We were a little nervous since we were doing this ourselves and had no idea what to expect. We took a little section in our kitchen window that is by the sink and sprayed it down with water. After letting it soak for just about a minute all the popcorn scraped right off! Now, its not exactly that easy [well parts were]. We figured out that using a Round-up garden sprayer was the best tool to wet down the areas we were scraping. Once it was soaked you literally just took the scraper and started scraping at the ceiling. You would reach down to the sheet rock and if you were not on one of the seams it would just fall right off. The seams look a little more TLC. After some trial and error, we found that doing an initial scrape and then wetting it a little more helped get a smoother end result. Obviously, you have to aim the water, because you don't want to have all the sheet rock soaked.
.jpg)
It only took us about 2 hours to get the kitchen finished, oh, and of course 4 trips to Lowe's. I must say, don't forget the masks when you are doing something like this [that was on trip #4]. Such a mess!! We were smart and covered all of our cabinets that we just finished. This made the clean up easier/quicker, but the dust still gets everywhere.
Once it was scraped, we then had to decide what to do with it. In order to save money, we decided to fill any nicks or holes and sand down the area until it was smooth. We had some paint left over that we used for the cabinets, so while I was working one evening, Darrell got it all painted. It wasn't the most perfectly smooth ceiling, but it looked fine in the natural light. The problem was that when it got dark and we had the kitchen lights on, it showed all the flaws. We knew this really wasn't going to work in this area, especially in the living room with those tall ceilings.
We were lucky enough to have family come down to help us through the rest of the house. My brother, Scott and my cousin, Jason had just finished the semester and decided to make the trip down to Austin. So, what did I do? Put them to work! :o) I did at least encourage drinking beer while doing all of this. So basically we had 2 options for fixing the ceiling flaws, we could either rent a gun and shoot the texture up there or we could roll it on and use a sponge to show a small texture on the ceiling. We went with the latter of the two options.
Instead of jumping right into that, we rented scaffolding from the Home Depot so we could get all the other rooms scraped. Yes, our ceilings are that high. It is actually not a horrible price, but assembly is required. Because neither of our cars could obviously fit the equipment, or Scott's FJ, we had to rent a Home Depot truck to get it to the house. 3 days later we had the ceilings scraped and textured. The only thing left to do was paint. Let me tell you, the extension polls are amazing. Or if you'd rather not purchase one, you can also use your household broom poll on the roller as well.
We now have both the kitchen and the living room done. We found that the kitchen was a little easier to texture because we had already applied some paint to the area, which helped the putty stay on. We still have to do all of the rooms in the house and the bathrooms, but we are debating again to texture or not to texture... I guess we'll see!
