Kitchen Renovation: How to Remove A Popcorn Ceiling

Hello friends one weary blogger here to share how to remove a popcorn ceiling.  I just removed mine from the kitchen this weekend with my sweet daughters help.

First, you need to be sure that your popcorn ceiling has no asbestos in it and if it does I would turn this project over to the professionals.  Its just not worth the risk to do it yourself.

Supplies

water bottle

scraper

mask

goggles

lots of drop cloths

and if you really want to stay clean-- a space suit

Cover all furniture and cabinets with plastic drop cloths, sheets, or whatever you want to protect everything.  Also, if you are smarter than me you will move everything out and cover your floors also, and then your clean up will be much easier. Sigh.

If you are planning to just paint your ceiling I would not recommend using the water bottle because if you use to much or you scrape to hard you are going to damage your sheet rock and cause more work in the long run.

If you are going to cover your ceiling the first step is to spray your ceiling in one to two foot areas with plain water.  (I put water in an old Greased Lightening bottle).  This softens the popcorn material (what is that stuff anyway?), cuts back on the powder residue from spreading over your entire home, and makes it easier to remove.

After you let it set for awhile start scraping it off.  It comes off very easily.  Continue those two steps until you have removed all of the finish. By the way we removed all the vents and light fixtures after I took this picture. 

When you get through you will look like this:

Hah! If I had on a darker T-shirt you would really be able to see how dirty I was. lol

Now if you were my daughter you looked like this:

Look at her! The hair is still in place, she hardly had any powder in her hair, and her make-up was still on! And she did just as much as I did and in this picture was going back around and touching up a few spots. Thanks sweetie I love you.

By the way I recommend a scraper like I used it really worked a lot better than a plain one.  It is made by W.M. Zinsserman, Co. Inc. I don’t know where my husband picked it up at but there are probably other similar ones out there.

Here is what your floors will look like with about one and one-half inches of popcorn ceiling on them.

It took us about one hour to remove the popcorn from a 10’ by 26’ ceiling and another hour and one-half to clean up.

The best way to clean up if you don’t cover your floors is to sweep up the majority, then vacuum, and finally mop a couple of times.  If you mop before you vacuum you will be mopping forever.

Now I just decided today (please don’t tell my daughter) to use real tin ceiling tiles because I found a wonderful dealer online and realized I could afford them.  You see that’s what I wanted to begin with but I was going to put up the fake glue up kind and needed the ceiling removed.  Oh well sorry Misty.

Here’s a sneak peek.

This is my pattern

and this is the color “Bright White Satin”.  I ordered them from American Tin Ceilings click here to go to their website.

We’ll that’s it and it really wasn’t all that hard just tedious and messy.  Hope this helps you in a future project and be sure and come back to see what’s happening next in my kitchen.

Sharing with the following lovely ladies:


Monday
Show off Your Cottage Monday
Do It Yourself Monday

Tuesday
Nifty Thrifty Tuesday
Tuesday's Treasures
Trash to Treasures Tuesday
One Project At A Time
Take it on Tuesday's Blog Hop

Wednesday
Be Inspired
Primp Your Stuff Wednesday


Thursday 
Transformation Thursday
Thriving on Thursdays
Thrifty Thrusday
Show Me Extraordinary

Friday
Feathered Nest Friday
Inspiration Friday
Frugal Friday
Show & Tell Friday
Fridays on Remodelaholic

Saturday
Saturday Night Special
Get Schooled Saturday
Saturday Spotlight

Sunday
Sunday Blog Love