If you have dealt with popcorn ceilings come in.

Lovemyflightmedic18

We are getting ready to reprint and do some work in my older DD's room because we are having a third child and DD1 & 2 will be sharing a room with bunkbeds. Has anyone gotten rid of the popcorn ceilings and mad ether flat instead. How hard is this to do?nwe are going to eventually do this o every room in the house. I figured we would start there and just go room to room.

BrianaBones

I've done it. It's not hard, just extremely messy. you have to take absolutely everything out of the room and cover it with plastic part way up the walls. 

you have to wet the popcorn to get it down, so that might mess up your paint a bit around the top.

I have a friend who just screwed new sheetrock on top of the old popcorn. I thought that was pretty genius. A little more expensive, but so much less work, and probably looked better in the end. It's nearly impossible to get it scraped perfectly smooth.  

 

When was your popcorn applied? If before 1979, make sure to test it for asbestos. 

Lovemyflightmedic18

I really like the idea of just putting up fresh Sheetrock. Sounds like a lot less work. Thanks for the input.

Pitterbull

I haven't done it, but I would give scraping a try first.  Maybe you'll get lucky like The Lettered Cottage and it will be super easy.

 http://theletteredcottage.net/popcorn-ceiling-to-plank-ceiling/

We have, however, gutted a couple rooms and put up new drywall.  That part isn't too hard, but taping seams and mudding is totally the most tedious and horrible job, imo.  Sanding joint compound is so dusty and it gets absolutely everywhere. 

Lovemyflightmedic18

I really appreciate the responses. We are having to take everything out of the room anyway as we are completely repainting the room for our 2 DD's to share. I think we should be able to scrape the popcorn off. so we will put plastic down open the window,shut the door and start scraping!!

chickaboo1974

Do you know when the popcorn was put on the ceiling?  Because some older homes the popcorn ceiling has asbestos in it- you do not want that floating around your home.  We paid someone to take off the popcorn and put a skim coat on.

Jenni232323

We took a flat edged scraper to our popcorn ceiling and it basically knocked down the peaks and then matched our sort of knockdown texture on our walls in the rest of the house. I'm ok with that v perfectly smooth ceilings which show every imperfection on our 1979 home. It was a mess like pp said - make sure to tarp everything off including your AC intake ducts to minimize the particulate going into your AC handler. We have beveled edges in each of our wood floor boards and in one area where we didn't cover with a tarp, I was cleaning each and every groove and bevel between the planks. Not fun.

SunnyCanadian

Popcorn ceiling is really common where I live, but we still wanted to scrape ours off. We bought my my grandparents house and because my grandma smoked in the house they used oil based paint so many times to paint the ceiling that its hard as a rock! No way would we be able to just spray it with water and expect it to scrape off. We can already see the drywall joints too, if we scraped the popcorn off they would be even more obvious.

bebe11

We hired someone to do it, although It didn't look too hard.  It was a messy project though!

MirandaHobbes

I was extremely lucky with mine. I could literally wipe it off with my hand it was so dusty and loose. I had to use a garden hose and spray everything- this cut down on the amount of dust and then it came down in giant nasty clumps. One room would not be hard. I'd try it. That said- I don't think my ceilings are the "norm". They are from 1950. It is actually illegal in my state to remove popcorn yourself pre-1979 because of asbestos (or you have to test it first to ensure it is not asbestos). We took our chances. Most ceilings don't come off as easily Also ours were in pristine condition underneath, also rare. No additional mudding or joint work needed- just fresh paint. You may find out when you scrape it down that it looks horrible.