# Remove Painted Popcorn Texture



## SuperiorPainter (Feb 12, 2011)

I haven't really done much residential painting, but a homeowner called the other day and he wants to remove popcorn from his ceiling. I haven't been out to his house yet but I am the type that aways expect the worst so I want to know is there a good simple way to remove popcorn texture that has been painted?

I want to know what I am up against so I can be sure to give a competitive price. 

Thanks for your help.


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## Harry (Aug 4, 2008)

SuperiorPainter said:


> I haven't really done much residential painting, but a homeowner called the other day and he wants to remove popcorn from his ceiling. I haven't been out to his house yet but I am the type that aways expect the worst so I want to know is there a good simple way to remove popcorn texture that has been painted?
> 
> I want to know what I am up against so I can be sure to give a competitive price.
> 
> Thanks for your help.


First thing you need to do is find out how old the home is because the texture may or may not contain asbestos!

That's your first step...


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## Paradigmzz (May 5, 2010)

second step, see if its been painted


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## Paradigmzz (May 5, 2010)

If its not been painted, you can clear the room, cover up everything and use a pump up sprayer and wet the popcorn. Take a 9" drywall blade or something equivelant and get to scraping. It will fall off like butter. 


Nasty, get everywhere, and on everything- butter.


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## CapitalCity (Feb 19, 2011)

I have had some come off like butter, literally melt off the ceiling with tap water and a pump sprayer from the home and garden dept at HD. 

On this most recent project it had been painted (perhaps a couple of times). Water did nothing to it. We dry scraped and then kilz'ed it, shot our new texture right over that.


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## paratrooper (Mar 6, 2009)

Once painted, it is 'glued' to the ceiling and often requires mechanical removal. In my own home, I have my drywaller put new 3/8" board over the texture and finish it smooth. You could probably texture over it, but it depends what you want the finish product to look like. I've seen some do a hand-troweled finish over shallow popcorn, but it still has the 'snad' finish.


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## WisePainter (Dec 27, 2008)

just ask any H.O. they'll know.


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## mpminter (Mar 21, 2011)

I can see I'm pretty late to the party, but I thought I'd throw in my 0.02 worth. We just did a job where the texture had been painted at least once, maybe more. We found that if you had one guy go over the ceiling with an 8" knife knocking off the points and then spraying the scraped area with water, another guy could go behind him and scrape the texture off. The key is to knock the points off and thus perforate the paint film. This allows the water to get behind the painted texture and loosen it. We did find that you often had to wet an area a few times to really loosen it up, but overall this approach worked really well. the customer wanted a slick ceiling so this was our best option. We were able to strip a 600sf ceiling in a day (three guys), which is obviously longer than if the texture had not been painted but I had bid the job well, and we made out ok.


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## Harry (Aug 4, 2008)

mpminter said:


> I can see I'm pretty late to the party, but I thought I'd throw in my 0.02 worth. We just did a job where the texture had been painted at least once, maybe more. We found that if you had one guy go over the ceiling with an 8" knife knocking off the points and then spraying the scraped area with water, another guy could go behind him and scrape the texture off. The key is to knock the points off and thus perforate the paint film. This allows the water to get behind the painted texture and loosen it. We did find that you often had to wet an area a few times to really loosen it up, but overall this approach worked really well. the customer wanted a slick ceiling so this was our best option. We were able to strip a 600sf ceiling in a day (three guys), which is obviously longer than if the texture had not been painted but I had bid the job well, and we made out ok.


Did you check for asbestos?


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## mpminter (Mar 21, 2011)

Nope


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## Contractor Jeff (Apr 8, 2011)

If the walls are orange peel textured, tex-spraying the ceilings after scraping will hide some imperfections. Most drywallers do a good job of taping before the the acoustic is sprayed on, but some don't because they know the acoustic will hide their taping job. Sometimes you have to skim coat the entire ceiling, which is a chore.


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## Pat_The_Painter (Mar 6, 2013)

Harry said:


> Did you check for asbestos?


How do you check for Asbestos? and if present what is the procedure?


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## Gough (Nov 24, 2010)

Pat_The_Painter said:


> How do you check for Asbestos? and if present what is the procedure?


Google is your friend:

http://www.pscleanair.org/regulated/asbestos/homeowners/asb-popcorn.pdf


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## Toolnut (Nov 23, 2012)

Since you're wetting it and keeping it wet and there is no dust I wouldn't lose too much sleep over asbestos. I think most people that got in trouble with asbestos worked in an environment where there was a lot of it in the air from sanding and grinding. Not from scrapping a couple hundred feet of ceiling. A good indicator of this is no lawyers on TV saying if you scrapped your ceiling call us.


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## chrisn (Jul 15, 2007)

3 years old:blink:


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## Gough (Nov 24, 2010)

chrisn said:


> 3 years old:blink:


It took me a minute to realize that you meant this thread...at first, I thought you meant the ceiling....


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## mudbone (Dec 26, 2011)

chrisn said:


> 3 years old:blink:


If ceiling was painted probably took 3 yrs to scrape!


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## SuperiorPainter (Feb 12, 2011)

The ceilings on this particular job had been painted with flat paint but it didn't seal the texture like a semi-gloss or eggshell. The texture came down fairly easy now however, I would just use a spray pump to avoid the pump action. There was a lot of work on those ceilings and I found it easier to prime the ceiling afterwards to see all of the imperfections which made it easier to fix the bad areas.

Thanks for everyone's help.


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## Sir Mixalot (Sep 8, 2009)

SuperiorPainter said:


> The ceilings on this particular job had been painted with flat paint but it didn't seal the texture like a semi-gloss or eggshell. The texture came down fairly easy now however, I would just use a spray pump to avoid the pump action. There was a lot of work on those ceilings and I found it easier to prime the ceiling afterwards to see all of the imperfections which made it easier to fix the bad areas.
> 
> Thanks for everyone's help.


I like the popcorn ceilings painted with semi-gloss. :thumbup:


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## SuperiorPainter (Feb 12, 2011)

Is that your video?


Sir Mixalot said:


> I like the popcorn ceilings painted with semi-gloss. :thumbup:
> 
> Popcorn ceiling coming down in big sheets - Indialantic,FL- (Part 1) - YouTube


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## Sir Mixalot (Sep 8, 2009)

SuperiorPainter said:


> Is that your video?


:yes:


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