In the last week, I’ve removed popcorn ceiling from the upstairs bathroom, and from the main floor living/dining room. The former was not painted, the latter was.

Removing the non-painted (or lightly painted) popcorn ceiling is as follows:

1. Take a large putty knife (8″ or so) and knock off the bigger popcorn
2. Take a spray bottle or a garden sprayer and get the stuff as moist as you can without having it drip all over
3. Let sit for 5 minutes or so
4. Take the large putty knife and scrape off the goop
5. Have a beer

Removing the heavily painted (and possibly multiple textured) popcorn ceiling is as follows:

1. Have a beer
2. Schedule a back/neck/shoulder massage for the day you plan to be done (add a day or two overage)
3. Have a beer
4. Find an ice scraper (the kind you use to remove ice from a driveway, about 6-8″ wide and with a 4′ or so handle), and sharpen up the edge
5. Attempt to scrape off as much of the large popcorn as possible
6. Take a garden sprayer and moisten the ceiling. It will only penetrate the areas you knocked off in the last step
7. Wait 5 minutes
8. Spray the ceiling again
9. Wait 5 minutes
10. Spray the ceiling again
11. Wait 5 minutes
12. Scrape away. You might not even get down to the plaster (or drywall) at this step. If not, repeat 6-11 again
13. Have a beer
14. Call it a night and repeat 1-13 over again until you finish it

If you can get your entire ceiling down to the plaster/drywall without settling for an inbetween, mad props to you. For the first area, I went down to the plaster. Of course, I didn’t think of the obvious things I’d find doing so. Things like cracked plaster, bad patch jobs, etc. If I had a few weeks to work on this, I would have taken all of the texture down to the plaster. However, the painter is here to work on it today or tomorrow so I had to settle for what I could. 90% of the ceiling is just scraped down as much as I could without breaking through to the plaster. It will be heavily textured again, but only about 50% of what it was before. Ideal? No, but it will work for now and will look much better than previously (hopefully).

Still no pictures. Sorry. I take the pictures, but I tend to write these posts away from the camera and computer. I will do my best to get them up here soon.