Popcorn Ceiling Removal: Day 1

Now that the dust has finally settled (both literally and figuratively), I thought that I would recount our glorious popcorn ceiling removal. We still have a bit of cleaning up to do, so I decided to postpone the big reveal of our brand new great room ceiling until next week. But more on that later! It's time to talk about everything that went down on the first day.

Living room pre-popcorn ceiling removal

When I first revealed that we were planning on having our popcorn ceilings removed, I mentioned that we had popcorn ceilings in every single room except the two bathrooms and the kitchen. We had them in the great room (the living room and the dining room), the hallway, and three bedrooms, which added up to over 1,000 square feet of popcorn ceilings.

Kitchen pre-popcorn ceiling removal (picture from move in day)

As you can see in the picture above, the dining room had a popcorn ceiling, but the kitchen did not. Popcorn ceilings are typically not in high-moisture areas such as kitchens and bathrooms because the moisture can loosen the popcorn and cause it to fall off.

Close-up of the division between the dining room (left) and kitchen (right) ceilings

Office pre-popcorn ceiling removal

Guest bedroom pre-popcorn ceiling removal

Master bedroom pre-popcorn ceiling removal (picture from before we painted the walls)

Living room post-popcorn ceiling removal

We chose a local registered contractor, All-Star Painting & Drywall, for the job. All-Star Painting & Drywall is the same contractor that painted the exterior of our house, and we were really happy with both the crew's work ethic and the result, so the decision was a no-brainer. We also loved that as professional drywall installers, they would have the skills necessary to handle any problems with the drywall underneath the popcorn.

Kitchen post-popcorn ceiling removal

First, the crew sealed off everything with plastic in the rooms that had popcorn to be removed. It made me sad that I couldn't access my kitchen and had to eat fast food for two days straight, but I was thankful afterward when there was hardly any mess left for us to clean up.

Scraped dining room ceiling (left) and kitchen ceiling (right)

Then they pre-scraped the popcorn so that water could get underneath the paint and loosen the popcorn. After that, they were able to wet the popcorn and scrape it off pretty easily. I was shocked by how quickly they scraped off all of the popcorn in the great room-- it only took them two or three hours to get it all down. It probably would have taken us several days to do it!

Dining room post-popcorn ceiling removal

Once all of the popcorn was scraped off, they reinforced the drywall with screws and patched over them with drywall mud.

Living room ceiling retextured

Finally, they retextured the ceilings to match the existing splatter texture on our walls.

Great room ceiling retextured

Dining room ceiling retextured

They even retextured the kitchen ceiling so that it flows seamlessly into the dining room ceiling. We can't even tell where the division was before! We're really happy with the way that it turned out.

Office ceiling retextured

The crew finished scraping and retexturing the great room (the living room, dining room, and kitchen), the hallway, and the office on the first day. They were left with the guest bedroom and the master bedroom to scrape and retexture and the great room to prime and paint on the second day. We opted to prime and paint all of the ceilings except the great room ceiling ourselves in order to save some money.

Comparison of the new splatter texture (left) and old popcorn texture (right)

For more information about popcorn ceilings and why we chose not to DIY this project, click here. Tune in next week for the full recap of Day 2!