[jeffy]

I have a Gardenia and last year I took on the huge job of getting rid of All popcorn in the house and garage. The wife did not like it and since we will be spending the rest of our life in this house , I had to agree.

It is realitively easy to scrape off. I purchased a lot of plastic sheeting at Lowes and used a garden sprayer (the type you add water to and then pump it up ) with water and a little soap and thouroghly sprayed the popcorn about 3 to 4 times. I bought a Gorilla ladder which converts to two ladders that I could put 2X6s between for scaffolding.

Once wet the popcorn comes down very easily with a drywall mudding tool. I bought a large dust pan that I held under the drywall blade as I scrapped it off and was able to get about 80% of it before it hit the ground.

Then you have to use drywall compound and finish the joints. This is one reason that they used to use popcorn, the drywall finishers do not have to finish it that well . The popcorn hides the joints. The worst part of the job is sanding the joints after you apply compound to smooth everything out. Because of this step I would recommend trying to find a contractor to do it. It is really a mess. I taped off each room with the huge plastic sheets so all the drywall dust stayed in that room.


I would highly recommend that anyone interested have this done. It is amazing how much taller your ceilings look after you remove the popcorn. I had the living room done but not the kitchen yet and you could really see the difference the removal makes. Now when I walk into a home , the ceiling is the first thing I notice. I cant stand the popcorn anymore.

There is a huge amount of info on the internet about the removal. That is where I got most of my info.

One word of caution, if you decide to paint your popcorn it may be harder to remove down the road. The popcorn is NOT painted by your builder. Hence it is very easy to soak with water now. However on one of the videos I watched the people were able to get the water behind the paint and the popcorn did come off in huge chunks.

It took me and average of 4 days per room. One day to scrape(5 hours )one day to apply drywall compound( 3 hours ), one day to sand( 2 to 4 hours ), and one day to paint.

jeffy