We just scraped ours off a couple of weeks ago. It wasn't too bad, a bit messy but it came off easier if we spayed water on it first. We used drywall taping knives with an extended handle.

I can empathize. We had popcorn ceilings in a previous home, and removing them proved to be more problematic than we anticipated--for all the reasons you mention. What a mess!!

In our current home (built in 1942), we didn't have popcorn, but we did have ceiling problems, and our solution may be one you ought to consider. Our kitchen had a drop ceiling, and the dining room had a plaster ceiling. We were tearing down the wall between the rooms, and I was not convinced that our GC could match the old plaster. Instead of attempting it, we went for wood ceilings. We used 6-inch pine planks and painted it white. It adds texture and interest without looking dated. We are very happy with this choice.

Here is a link that might be useful:

I'm not sure if this would work or not, but can't you get a taper/spackler to give you a quote on "skim coating" the ceiling? Rather than removing the popcorn, this would cover it up with spackle and should take care of the waviness too.

Can you skim coat over popcorn? I wouldn't think that could work. Have you done this or do you know anyone who did, kitchenkrazed?

(Getting the popcorn out is one of my biggest reno priorities, too, but mine is old enough to need asbestos testing.)

No, unfortunately I don't know anyone who has done this. Just thought I'd brainstorm and offer it as a possible suggestion. Sorry if it won't work! :) Are there any spackling gurus out there who can shed some light on the subject?

About 5 years ago I started scaping off the popcorn ceiling in quite a few rooms in my house using a squirt bottle of water and wide putty scraper. While in the process of scraping, I had several drywall firms in to give me estimates on finishing the ceiling once I was done removing the popcorn.

The first firm came in and told me I had done a serious mistake removing the popcorn in this manner and it would take 3 men 4 days and almost $10K to fix the situation! I'm not an experienced DIYer so I was near panic when he left!

The second drywaller came and said, "no problem. just finish scaping just the way you've been doing (being careful not to dig into the existing ceiling under the popcorn) and he would come in after, put a thincoat of mud over it, and it would be fine. It would be just him, take 1 1/2 days and run just over $1K. I told him what the other firm had told me and he said he didn't know what they were talking about--this is how he has always removed popcorn. He just suggested that I wear a mask so I didn't breathe in the dust.

Third guy dittoed the second guy. First guy was obviously scamming me. I reported him to the Better Business Bureau.

Hang in there. The scraping is the really yuckie part of the job. The second guy just came in and sprayed on a thin coat with just slight texturing on the ceiling. Painter came in and painted over and it's beautiful--no drywall seams or anything show through. HTH!

I also have awful popcorn ceilings throughout my house. The previous owners lied to us and told us there was no asbestos. (I wanted to be absolutely certain before we scraped and discovered that there is a small amount of asbestos, 1%, in the popcorn.) I think you're past the era of asbestos, but you might want to research to make certain. And you could even test, just to be absolutely 100% sure. The tests are easy to do and the lab fee was under $40 - definitely worth the expense for my safety.

I believe that most ceilings with popcorn do not have sufficiently smooth seams to have a completely flat ceiling without some re-working of the drywall seams. You should be able to hire someone to do a thin coating with minimal texturing to hide these seams (as flwrs_n_co did). I believe this is always done after popcorn scraping. As I understand, it's unpleasant work, but certainly DIY-able.

We have a split level also but in our case it's the kitchen, dining room, and entry on the same level (with living room half a level above). During the remodel we had the popcorn ceilings scraped and patched. I'm so happy that we did this! Especially since we were removing a couple of beams and patching the popcorn would have been ugly. It looks great, I love it. Now I want to do the living room. ;)

Do whatever it takes to remove the popcorn :)

The best money spent in your kitchen remodel will be a smooth ceiling. It is actually a simple DIY project if you dont have asbestos. You could put 1/4" dry over the wavy ceiling.

We had the popcorn removed from our downstairs ceiling (including in the kitchen) and on the second day, they sprayed an "orange peel" finish onto it, and "knocked it down" with a skimmer blade and some sanding. It now matches the texture on our walls, and that seems to have hidden any small imperfections in the drywall taping.

It made a huge difference just to get it painted a real bright white!

You can not skim coat over popcorn, because the moisture and weight of the skim coat pulls the popcorn off.

I have done the removal and retexturing - it is a tedious PITA. We had a pro do the remaining three rooms, and it was well worth the cost and the hassle. They did a very simple "skip trowel" texture after fixing a couple of wavy seams. I painted and the house looks much better.

PricklyPear - That 1% is considered "not there", and doesn't require special cleanup.

We had a similar situation. The prior owners had re-done the kitchen so it had a flat ceiling, but the rest of the space (living room & dining area) had popcorn ceilings. When we opened the space up to be a kitchen/great room, we would have either had to put popcorn in the kitchen to match the rest of the space (no way) or get rid of it all.

We ended up pulling down all of the ceiling and putting in new drywall. I couldn't be more pleased. Since the ceilings were opened up, we were able to upgrade the 35+ year old insulation, and we were able to take care of all of our lighting and electrical work without a hassle.

We are DYI'ing much of our project, but our celings are cathedral so we hired this part out. We found a great dry wall guy and it was much less expensive than we thought it would be. Money WELL spent.

Whether you scrape or replace, I think you'll be very happy to not have popcorn celings!

Oops, pardon me, that was a typo. It's actually 5% asbestos. According to the report, the testing lab considers anything "less than 1%" negligible. Unfortunately, we didn't make that grade.

We have a 2100 sq foot house and removed almost all of the popcorn ourselves. I hate hate HATE popcorn ceilings. Plus, our ceilings are only 8ft...so it was just THERE...hnaging over us, it was so darn noticeable!

We had it tested for asbestos (our house was built in the 70s, I think a house built in the 80s is pretty safe) and we passed, so we did not have to worry about that. My DH wore one of those sprayers on his back, like you use to spray weedkiller. He soaked the popcorn in patches, then we scraped. It was very messy, but we had just purchased the house and ripped out the flooring, had no furniture, were knocking down walls, etc. We knew if we did not do it at that time, we never would.

My DH *REALLY* wanted a smooth ceiling. I, personally, LIKE knockdown. Not the tiny, dotty knockdown, but the big swoops. We were disagreeing over which look to go for, but after all the popcorn was scraped, the waves in the ceiling were AWFUL and he agreed we MUST do knockdown.

We found a company that sprayed the knockdown for about $1200, and they also removed the popcorn in the garage for us and sprayed knockdown in there. That price did not include painting, we primed and painted ourselves.

I can't believe you cannot find someone to scrape the popcorn! Mayeb if they scraped the popcorn AND finished the ceiling?

Honestly, if we had to do it over again, I think we would pay someone to do it. Then again, we were (actually we ARE) on a tight budget so saving another 1k I guess was worth it.

I love my ceilings SO MUCH now. DH and I actually lay in bed and look at the ceiling and talk about how much we love them. Weird, I know!

Good luck!

We had 1970's popcorn which dh scraped down without water and then put a skim coat of drywall mud, sanded, coated some more where we removed a wall, sanded and painted and then our friend who does knockdown ceilings for a living sprayed it and it looks great. It's really important to put a good quality ceiling paint on because knockdown does not give 100% coverage like popcorn.

I love it and I *really* dislike textured ceilings.

I just finished removing the popcorn from my first floor ceilings and have started the second floor. Check to see if they still used asbestos in your area in the 80"s. I sprayed a few strips at a time with water in a garden sprayer (don't over-saturate or you could damage the drywall) and scraped it off with a large drywall knife (keep the angle small so you don't dig into the drywall). It's easy peasy; only takes a couple of hours. I got quotes for a skim coat (about $500/room) but did it myself. The seams will already have been mudded at least once and maybe even a coat of primer (it won't just be bare drywall underneath). Sand down any really badly mudded areas first. I skim coated the whole ceiling but I think you could get away without that if the texture looks pretty even. I started with the premixed drywall compound (dust free one) but I like the lite setting powder better. Even if you don't do a good job after you prime and paint with a flat paint the bad spots really won't show. It will certainly look far less oppressive then that awful popcorn.

I textured by spreading thinned drywall mud onto the ceiling and rolling it with a texturing roller, then knocking off the peaks when it was almost dry - skim coat and texture in one. It gave an interesting rippled effect, almost like water.

But the shoulders took weeks to recover.

Holligator's board ceiling is very nice. Fits the rest of the decor very well. I appreciate the photo.

WE had popcorn also. We removed it with a water spray bottle and a scraper. My husband scraped and I used a huge commercial vaccum just under the scraper...so almost no mess and the job was done in 2 evenings.
Then we had the plaster man come in twice to put a thin coat of plaster only on some areas. The worst part was when the plaster man was sanding the plaster. My floors were white! Good thing we had wall of plastic nstalled covering our new cabinets and counters.
Would we do it again...We say yes!

Also, regardless of whether it's asbestos or not, you can also simply cover with a new layer of drywall. I would imagine this could complicate light fixtures, but might be a good option if you can't find anyone to do the scraping.

" I would imagine this could complicate light fixtures ..."

That is what box extensions are made for.

Thanks brickeyee. I knew there must be some product out there to solve the problem, but I had no idea what it would be called.

I had popcorn ceilings throughout my last house (except the kitchen). I hated them and did a full spackle job over the ceiling in the living room. It was a PIA to do, I started it and my husband (at the time) finished it. We aimed for a smooth surface, I think it turned out great and looked so much better but it was not easy to do. Good luck with your project.

I recently did like lazygardens did except didn't do it with a roller. Did it with a texture brush on a extension pole. Took me about an hour or so. I didn't have popcorn ceiling though (it was old drywall mud swirled).
On TV I have seen them remove it by spraying it with a garden sprayer then scraping it off.

This link has pics of my recent knockdown. The knockdown hides joints etc
http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/paint/msg081718119973.html?7

Here is a link that might be useful: My First Knockdown

"On TV I have seen them remove it by spraying it with a garden sprayer then scraping it off."

the pros that did ours used a garden HOSE with a special nozzle for most of it, after completely covering everything with huge sheets of plastic. They took 3x longer to put up the plastic than they did to remove the popcorn.

I just had the popcorn removed from my kitchen, laundry room, a niche in the living room, and my master bathroom this week. We had a drywall lady come in and she removed it all, patched holes, sanded/sanded/and sanded again, and now it is ready for us to paint. A lot of mess which she kept under control and left no trace of, and was on time every day (unlike the guys I've been having out). A very good experience! Worth the $.

We had ugly popcorn ceilings throughout our 31 year house. We had 1/4 blueboard put up over it and then a skim coat of plaster. Looks great now.

Denise

We have had popcorn removed from our entire home. The removal is messy but easy. Some replace it with a textured or what they call a knockdown finish but, if I was going to the trouble, I wanted smooth. It is the smoothing that takes the most time. After removal the ceilings were skim coated (I think 2 coats) and then patched where bubbles occur and sanded smooth. The dry wall guys did it on stilts. So pleased with the results. It really makes a huge difference.

I am so relieved to read this post and it's responses...from the subject line it almost sounded like you were thinking about installing a popcorn ceiling and were looking for tips--lol.

I am guessing that this is one trend that is NOT going to come back around! So many popcorn ceilings and EVERYONE seems to loathe them. Anyone actually like their popcorn ceiling? Just curious!

I once attended a party given by the people who had done a lot of restoration on a 20s vintage Mizner style home. Much of it was beautifully done and very appropriate to the period, but they were proudest of all of their new popcorn with sparkles in it on the ceilings!

Our house is early 80's with popcorn ceilings throughout. DH and I don't mind the texture at all. When we remodeled the kitchen, the remodeling company wanted smooth ceilings, but we wanted a popcorn texture that blended in with the rest of the house. They were aghast. However, changing the kitchen would have meant changing the rest of the house, and consistency is preferable. We did not want the kitchen remodel to mushroom into a whole house remodel. So, yes, we intentionally added popcorn texture. We do have very smooth ceilings underneath if we or anyone else ever wants to get rid of it. It may not be trendy, but it's also not something I really notice.

I have popcorn ceilings and never minded them until I started reading this message board about how awful they were. Now I don't like them but I don't think they are horrible. I had mine painted white a while ago(yes, I like white ceilings still) and they are clean looking.

A neighbor had her popcorn removed in her kitchen, living and dining room and it does look nice. Her old popcorn was dingy and yellowed, though. The new ceiling does show some flaws but overall it's nice.

I don't really hate them either. I think they do a great job of sound muffling. I'd put them in my new build, but I know they are out of style.

I think a wavy smooth ceiling would look worse. If you use a flat ceiling paint, you'll have a less-noticible ceiling. Popcorn does cover a multitude of sins. We put them in our rentals that we've redone. Hey, we even own a "popcorn machine". Make that 2--I'm ready for my weekly popcorn fix. It isn't Sunday night, but we were gone last night.