Out with the Popcorn Ceilings, In with the New Ceilings

Popcorn ceilings…we’ve all lived under them unless you were born before the 1950’s. It was originally invented and introduced to reduce noise in a room, but it had many other advantages as well. It cost less than painting, and was fairly easy to accomplish, especially to hide poor workmanship on the ceiling. Unfortunately, they are hard to clean, easily damaged, and some contain asbestos, which can cause serious health problems, such as lung cancer, asbestosis, and mesothelioma.

I bought a house some years ago, and all of the bedrooms had popcorn ceilings. I wanted to save some money, so I decided to research it and think about doing it myself. I am no handyman but this is what I discovered I would need: a fan, a small putty knife, a larger putty knife, a garden sprayer, rags, cleaning products, plastic for the floors, effective breathing equipment, complete body coverage, and perhaps a friend to help out. Before I did anything, I need to find out if my popcorn ceiling contains asbestos. Not all spray-on popcorn ceilings contain asbestos, but to be sure, I thought about taking a sample of the popcorn ceiling, and sending it to a lab for analysis. This sounded like too much work, so I just assumed it does to be safe.

Through my research, I found that first I needed to wet the ceiling. There are some options for doing so, I personally found a garden sprayer to be the easiest. Lucky for me, I already had one in my backyard and sprayed the entire ceiling, and let the water soak for about 10 minutes. 10 minutes is significant because it could possibly damage the wallboards. I thoroughly scraped the popcorn ceiling off the wall, and let it fall onto the plastic sheets I aligned along the floor. After the removal, I thoroughly wipe down the entire ceiling where smeared asbestos could still remain. It was at this point I looked to my ceiling and could go no further. I followed the directions step by step, but was still concerned that I had not done the job that the Do It Yourself website had described.

Removal of popcorn ceilings can be very difficult to do alone or even with someone. I ended up hiring a professional to come out and do it, not only because it was a hard task, but for my safety. After my research I realized asbestos was probably too high of a risk for me to be messing with anyways. Do yourself a favor, and do the research. Either be extremely careful when doing this, or hire a professional. All I know is I am happy with my new, modern, and not to mention completely safe ceilings!