How To Remove Your Popcorn Ceiling (and a Zoolander plug)

Can we all agree on something?

Good popcorn:

Bad popcorn:

Good. Very good:

Bad. Very bad:

We recently bought a fixer-upper and those suckers had to go before we moved in--which was yesterday, by the way.

Let me tell you that going from a popcorn to a nice orange peel ceiling made our 1983 house look at least 20 years newer--without doing anything else!

Don't get me wrong, there's PLENTY left to do.

Retexturing is not easy. I won't lie.

It IS worth it.

1. Cover everything! When that junk comes down, it's a nasty mess. For reals.

2. Wear goggles and a mask. You don't want the black lung, Pop.

3. Using a spray bottle of water, spray the ceiling in a workable area--for my husband, it was a few feet at a time. If your ceilings are painted, you will need to let the water soak in for a few minutes.

Can we pretend that's a water bottle and not a Spray N Wash bottle he found in the garage and filled with water? 

'kay, thanks.

While we're pretending, can we just say that that chainy light fixture is gone forever? 

'kay, thanks.

4. Scrape the texture off. My husband used a 6" putty knife and it worked like a champ.

I told you it was a mess. Those countertops are going, too, my friend.
Oh. Yes. They. Are.

**You could stop here, brushing off any residue, then paint.**

We're crazy. We believe hard work is its own virtue, so we went ahead and retextured, too, using a friend's hopper gun connected to an air compressor and boxed joint compound.

Next time (there will never be a next time), we'll skip that last part.

All done:



If you want to keep your chainy light fixtures, feel free to remove them first.