DIY popcorn ceiling removal Archives - RemoveCeilingTexture.com

A Simple Guide on How to Remove Popcorn Ceilings

Saturday – Begin Project

1. Arm yourself with a scraper and determination.

2. Haul out your old, rickety ladder. Hmmm, you’ve been meaning to get a new ladder…

3. Go buy a new ladder. And several other things that catch your eye at Costco.

4. Set up the new ladder in the bedroom. Remove the popcorn. Easy.

5. Realize the layers of paint on the ceiling do not make for easy scraping. Use some elbow grease.

6. Curse at the hole you’ve gouged in the drywall by using elbow grease.

7. Look at the small patch you’ve managed to scrape off so far. Look at the rest of the room ahead of you and think of the other bedrooms, dining room, living room and hallway still waiting. Sigh.

How to Remove Popcorn Ceilings article: Popcorn ceiling removal at a condo at 1128 Quebec St, Vancouver - Bedroom — Popcorn ceiling removal at a condo at 1128 Quebec St, Vancouver – Bedroom

8. Climb down the ladder and shake off all the popcorn and dust from your hair and clothes. Wonder if the dust is hazardous.

9. Sit down at computer and Google “is popcorn ceiling dust dangerous”. Hide screen from your wife as you see the word ASBESTOS.

10. Find out that your house is not old enough to have asbestos. Phew.

11. Check email, Facebook & Twitter. Find out if the ladder you bought is cheaper anywhere else.

12. Eat lunch.

13. March back to the bedroom. Try to ignore Rover’s sad puppy dog eyes and the leash in his mouth. Fail. Call for your wife to take Rover for a walk. Remember she has taken your daughter to a piano lesson.

14. Be pulled along by Rover as he sniffs every bush and pees on every post. Realize, too late, that you forgot to bring a plastic bag. S#*t.

How to Remove Popcorn Ceilings article: Popcorn ceiling removal at a condo at 1128 Quebec St, Vancouver - Hallway — Popcorn ceiling removal at a condo at 1128 Quebec St, Vancouver – Hallway

15. Revived from the fresh air, continue your work in the bedroom. Climb up and down the ladder multiple times as you move it foot by foot around the 200 square foot room.

16. Greet your wife and daughter as they walk in the door. Wonder why their mouths are dropped open in horror. Look down from your perch on the ladder at the popcorn-strewn floor around you. Comfort them with the fact that at least it doesn’t have asbestos.

17. Vacuum the popcorn-ceiling-dust trail that Rover has tracked all over the house.

18. Eat dinner. Resolve that you will continue working after dinner.

19. Decide to catch a bit of the game before continuing.

20. Decide it’s too late to continue with the ceiling tonight. Continue to watch TV instead.

21. Calmly answer your wife’s questions about the scrape marks and gouges in the bedroom ceiling.

Sunday – Continue Project

22. Mow the lawn.

23. Start removing popcorn ceiling in hallway.

24. Remember you have to renew your car insurance before it runs out tomorrow. Go renew insurance.

25. Start removing popcorn ceiling in hallway, until your wife suggests maybe the living room should be next.

26. Start removing popcorn ceiling in the living room.

27. Realize that starting this project may have been a mistake.

How to Remove Popcorn Ceilings article: Popcorn ceiling removal at a condo at 1128 Quebec St, Vancouver - Living Room — Popcorn ceiling removal at a condo at 1128 Quebec St, Vancouver – Living Room

28. Have an early lunch because you have to go coach your daughter’s soccer team.

29. Notice that your garage s pretty messy and spend several hours sorting through junk.

30. Have dinner.

31. Continue working on the living room ceiling until Game of Thrones comes on.

Monday – Friday: You’re too tired after work to contemplate working on the ceilings.

Saturday – Sunday: This weekend is your daughter’s soccer tournament.

Monday – Friday: You’re too tired after work to contemplate working on the ceilings.

Is Your Time Worth Nothing?

How to Remove Popcorn Ceilings article: Popcorn ceiling removal at a condo at 71 Jameson Crt, New Westminster - Living room — Popcorn ceiling removal at a condo at 71 Jameson Crt, New Westminster – Living room

The above timeline may be a bit of an exaggeration, but the point is, you have other responsibilities in your life besides removing popcorn ceilings. When you’re working on your own home, there are dozens of things to distract you. You may think, “But I’ll save money doing it myself!” That’s only true if you value your own time at zero, because as the saying goes, time is money. Also, no matter what the online guides say about how to remove popcorn ceilings, it’s not easy work. It doesn’t always scrape off easily, and you could damage the drywall beneath. Another thing these guides don’t usually mention is that scraping the texture off is only the first step to getting smooth ceilings. Your ceilings will still need to be resurfaced before you can think about painting them, or they will look rough. It’s usually fairly easy to spot a DIY texture removal–they just don’t look quite finished.

How to Remove Popcorn Ceilings article: Popcorn ceiling removal at a condo at 71 Jameson Crt, New Westminster - Dining Room — Popcorn ceiling removal at a condo at 71 Jameson Crt, New Westminster – Dining Room

At RemoveCeilingTexture.com we cringe when we see the How to Remove Popcorn Ceilings guides online because we know that as with many DIY projects, it often turns into a headache and the end result is not ideal. We get a lot of calls to fix ceilings that were a failed DIY attempt at ceiling texture removal.

As professional ceiling experts, our only responsibility is to work on your ceilings. We’re not distracted by taking dogs for walks, mowing the lawn, renewing the insurance, soccer games, etc., etc. We also have the tools necessary to get the job done. We have a special machine that takes off the texture and then we resurface the ceilings using a method that has been used for centuries by master artisans.

How to Remove Popcorn Ceilings article: Popcorn ceiling removal at a condo at 71 Jameson Crt, New Westminster - Bedroom — Popcorn ceiling removal at a condo at 71 Jameson Crt, New Westminster – Bedroom

The hawk and trowel. This method takes years of experience to master. Our experience and specialization in ceiling texture removal is what makes us unique. What may take you weeks to finish, we can accomplish in several days. Our end result is professionally finished, smooth ceilings. Your time is valuable so why waste it with a trial and error attempt at removing popcorn texture?

To get a free quote for removing popcorn ceilings, give us a call at 604-420-7578 or contact us by email. Also, take a look at some of our other before and after photos to see how ceiling texture removal can transform a room.

Find out more about popcorn ceiling removal done the professional way. Contact us today for a FREE quote!

Not a DIY Project

Some people may tell you that scraping texture from ceilings is easy. They may also have a bridge for sale. It’s probably best not to buy it, despite the fantastic price.

This is what DIY texture removal and ceiling smoothing looks like. RemoveCeilingTexture was called in to fix the mess.

In actuality, scraping texture from ceilings is messy and difficult work. Once the texture is gone, it still won’t be paint ready. Popcorn texture is applied so that builders don’t have to finish the ceilings properly. This saves them time and money. So once you’ve scraped your ceilings, you’ll see all the imperfections. This applies to both drywall and concrete ceilings. If your ceilings are concrete, you may have to deal with waves and ridges caused by the concrete forms. The ceiling will need to be professionally finished if you want it to look decent.

Asbestos–The Fire Resistant Gift That Keeps On Giving

You also have to consider the fact that houses and apartments built before 1980 could have asbestos in the ceiling texture. Asbestos was used in all sorts of building materials, including some ceiling textures, because it is fire resistant. At the time, they thought it was a miracle product. They later learned that microscopic, airborne asbestos fibres are extremely dangerous to breathe in. The fibres get lodged in your lungs and can cause scarring and mesothelioma, a type of cancer. You definitely don’t want to be scraping texture from ceilings if there’s a chance it could have asbestos fibres. At RemoveCeilingTexture.com, we test the texture to make sure there’s no asbestos if the building was built prior to 1985. This is for our safety as well as yours.

Scraping Texture From Ceilings: A Friendship Saved

We were recently contacted by a homeowner in downtown Vancouver who had figured that scraping his ceiling texture would be a piece of cake. His condo was built in the late 1980s, so asbestos was not a concern. He started in the living room with a friend’s help. What would take one professional no time at all ended up taking them a combined time of over 20 hours, and that was for the living/dining room only! And even with all that work, the ceiling looked horrible once the texture was gone. On top of that, he had a major mess on his hands, as the scraped texture ended up covering every surface in the apartment.

The floor was a complete mess after the homeowner tried scraping texture from ceilings. RemoveCeilingTexture.com's process is not nearly this messy. — The floor was a complete mess after the homeowner tried scraping texture from ceilings. RemoveCeilingTexture.com’s process is not nearly this messy.

The homeowner soon realized that he was in over his head, quite literally. When you don’t have the tools and most importantly, the expertise, the project quickly turns into a nightmare. He decided there was no way he could ask his friend to continue this madness with him, if he valued his friendship. So he contacted us. We fixed the living and dining room ceilings that they had worked on and resurfaced the ceilings in the rest of the condo. We also repaired a section of ceiling where a wall had been removed. The ceiling transition between the two rooms is now seamless.

Wall removal left a large section of the ceiling to be repaired. We fixed this with no problem.

After deciding that scraping texture from ceilings himself was too difficult, the homeowner called us in to do the rest of the condo.

At RemoveCeilingTexture.com, our area of focus is quite specific: We take ceilings from lumpy and dated to smooth and modern. We have the tools and the expertise and so we were able to rescue his DIY attempt, save his sanity and quite possibly save a friendship.

World peace is next on our list.

The laundry room gets updated thanks to popcorn ceiling texture removal.

And Now You Know…The Rest of the Story

The truth is, scraping texture from ceilings is only the first step in the process of getting smooth ceilings. Once the texture has been removed, we apply layers of compound, by hawk and trowel, to ensure the finished ceiling is level and free of any blemishes. This takes an expert eye and years of experience. Since your ceilings will need to be professionally finished even if you scrape them yourself, why not save yourself the headache and mess and have a professional work on them from the start? Call us today at 604-420-7578 for a FREE QUOTE on ceiling texture removal, or contact us by email.

Did you try to scrape your ceilings yourself and now need them fixed? Contact us today for a FREE quote!