Removing Popcorn Ceilings in the Whole House!

We were back and forth on removing the popcorn ceilings. We knew that if we wanted to do it, we needed to get it done BEFORE we moved in. We got a quote on getting it done professionally and it was going to cost a couple thousand dollars. We ended up doing this entire project for about $300 including paint and all supplies. Now I would say that if you don't like the idea of sweating and doing very hard, physical work for 2 weeks you might want to hire someone.

I did a lot of research on Pinterest reading multiple blogs about what to do with popcorn ceilings. Some people said they just covered it up, but that was going to cost about the same amount as hiring someone to take it down. I did not find a blog on someone doing this on the entire house. Most people just did one room at a time while they were redecorating. It took them about an hour to scrape 1 room so I thought we would be able to do our entire 2300 sq. ft. house in 2 days. HAHA boy was I wrong.

Step 1: Preparing

Materials:

• Painters tape ( we only used 1 roll in the entire house)
• Plastic Sheeting  (We got our's from Home Depot and got the more expensive stuff because it was supposed to "stick" to things. It did stick very well to the wood floors, but not the carpet so lots of tape was still needed)
• Ladder and drill to remove fixtures.
• Bag or Tupperware to put all screws for fixtures in!

We closed on the house on a Tuesday afternoon. On our way home from closing, we stopped at Home Depot to pick up some supplies such as plastic sheeting, tape, and a scraper. 

For the next couple of nights we came over and laid the plastic sheeting on the ENTIRE house. We went up over the base boards and taped it to the walls with painters tape. I had seen where you could tape it near the top of the wall, but none of it got on the walls (just water) so I'm glad we decided not to do this. Honestly, most of the tape came off the wall when the ceiling fell on it, but I think it helped enough! 

We were extra careful to overlap the seams and tape them with lots of tape. On the wood floors it wasn't the end of the world if it leaked through, but we didn't want to ruin our new carpet. We were lucky that the flooring was brand new and to our liking when we bought the house, but this project would be SO much easier if you didn't care about saving the floors!

We thought we could do the entire house in 2 nights. I now laugh at our enthusiasm, as it took us like 9 hours to do this. Also, we learned very quickly how to talk things through and be a team. Plastic sheeting is NOT very much fun to spread out. Think plastic food wrap times 100.  We also made a reference or two to the show Dexter and we decided he made it look WAY too easy!

Once my dad came in town Friday night (he had the ladder), he worked on taking down the lights, vents, and ceilings fans while we kept laying plastic sheeting. We really lucked out having my dad on board. He brought so many of his supplies so we saved money on paint supplies and ladders.  ***Make sure you turn the breakers off when messing with the lights. It was dark so we plugged a spotlight into the fridge plug (on it's own breaker) so we could see what we were doing.

Originally (you can see in many of these pictures), we were going to leave the ceiling fans up and just drape plastic over them, but after getting started they were in the way of the guys scraping motion so they all go taken down and put in the garage.

The florescent lights in the kitchen also got taken down. I did not like them and knew that we would be replacing them. It left 4 pretty decent sized holes in the ceiling, but we filled them in before painting.

What the house looked like the morning we started scraping.

Step 2: Scraping the Ceilings

**BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING, TURN YOUR BREAKERS OFF!!! Water and electricity DO NOT mix!**

This part is very messy and very physically demanding. You need at least 3 people to make this most efficient. Also, if you have 9 foot ceilings like we do, make sure at least 2 people are around 6 feet tall. Otherwise, scraping is even harder! My little 5'3" self could barely even reach the ceiling so I couldn't get the force behind it to scrape without denting the drywall.

Materials:

• Garden Pump Sprayer (We choose this one because of it's multi nozzle. We knew we would use it for fertilizer/weed killer later on so we wanted more options)
• Scraper (I read so much about the different options. We choose the actual one made for scraping ceilings because we could attach an extension pole. We also used a plastic paint scraper along the edge where the ceiling met the wall to clean it up)
• Extension poles (you know the ones you use to paint)
• Safety Items: Eye glasses and mask for sure. We added cloth booties to keep our shoes clean and hair nets to prevent the nasty to dry in our hair.  Andrew works in a "clean" environment so he snagged these for us from work (Please don't fire him) the week before our project.

~I don't have many pictures of each step because it was wet and gross and I was actually working, but most are self explanatory and if you have any questions, just leave a comment and I'll try to help you out :

1. Put your safety gear on. You could do this project without all of it, but you have water and the ceiling falling down so a mask and safety glasses are a must. ***Please check to make sure you do not have asbestos before doing this project. Our house was built in 1994 so we knew we were safe***

   

   We look like nerds, but it was helpful!

2. Fill up the garden sprayer with water and pump it up to build pressure. I was the one who was spraying the water and I would only fill it up 3/4's of the way. While this means more trips to refill, I could actually hold the water above my head.
3. You will now spray the ceiling with water. This is the tricky part. You don't want it to be too wet or the drywall will tear, but too dry and it is near impossible to scrape. We found it to be useful to spray an area first and let it sit for about 5 minutes and then respray it right before Andrew or Dad scraped it off. Having this job is frustrating because you are literally holding a sprayer over your head ALL DAY long. My neck and shoulders and back were on fire after doing this for 2 days.
4. Once you think the ceiling is wet enough, use the scraper to scrape it off in long straight strokes. You want to make sure the blade on the scraper is about 45 degrees to the ceiling and you don't actually want to use too much force/pressure or the drywall will tear. However, if you find it hard to get the texture off, just Both the guys will tell you that it will cut through it like butter, until you get to a joint where there is mud underneath and then you really have to use some force.
   
   
   
   
   
   

   

   
   

5. This is really dirty and disgusting and looks like wet oatmeal falling to the floor. As the water sprayer, I would make sure that none got on the walls. If you immediately wipe it off then it causes no damage. If it dries, just take a warm wet rag and wipe it off and it should come right off!
6. The guys went around and together scraped the living room and kitchen. When that was done, they took turns taking breaks and getting up on a ladder to do the edges. They would spray a section near the edge and then take a plastic putty knife to clean up the edges. They would then wipe down the walls and move around the room. They also did around the lights, if it wasn't done with the big scraper.
7. This took us 2 days (Saturday and Sunday) to do our entire house. We were going to leave all of the plastic sheeting down to use for painting, but it had holes and some of the water leaked through so cleaned it up as soon as possible.
8. After we had done the whole house, we came around to make sure we hadn't missed any spots and touched it up with the scraper and water bottle.
9. We forgot this part until after we had cleaned up, but now would be a great time to go around with drywall spackle and fill in all holes in the drywall. After it has dried, you will sand it down and you will have a perfectly smooth ceiling! We really didn't have to do much of this-mostly just where we took out lights.
   

Step 3: Clean-up

1. We took the plastic sheeting up when we were done. We just rolled it up onto itself. We then put about 3 rooms into a giant black bag. These bags weighed at least 50 pounds and we could only get 3 in the garbage can with us feeling comfortable that the wheels wouldn't break. We also made some jokes in reference to the show Dexter and how it looked as if we had killed a lot of people (there were 6 bags total). haha
2. We then spent the entire week cleaning the place up. We had 2 shop-vacs thanks to my parents and Andrew and I went into separate rooms and first swept then vacuumed around EVERY SINGLE BASEBOARD! 
3. After we had vacuumed the baseboards, I used some of my Mrs. Meyers Multi-surface cleaner and wiped down all the baseboards to get rid of dust.
4. Our wood floors looked HORRIBLE and it took us damp mopping 3 times to get them back to normal! 

Step 4: Admire all the work you have done!

You will be sore for the entire next week-neck, back, arms, shoulders! You have done a great job and your house already looks better! You will contemplate just leaving the drywall exposed because you can not imagine ANOTHER weekend filled with doing things to your ceiling. All your hard work is going to pay off real soon when you have nice flat ceilings.

Shout-out to my dad, whose birthday is next week! We are so incredibly thankful for all the work you helped us accomplish! We would not have been able to do this without you, at least not all in 1 weekend. Thanks for inspiring me to do things myself and buying Andrew all sorts of power tools so he can help me be crafty! Are you ready to quit your job and scrape ceilings full time?! haha I love you, Dad!

I will share in my next post about how we painted the drywall and show you the finished look!