I love popcorn

Just not on my ceiling! One of this biggest mistakes I made when building my house, was to overlook the fact that it would have popcorn ceilings.  ARGH!!!  There is nothing I dislike much more than that lint catching, stalactite form of acoustic.  What was I thinking?  I have lived with it by just avoiding eye contact for quite a while.  After our awful upstairs bathroom flood, I decided to completely gut the boys’ rooms and give them a makeover. 

The first thing that happened, was to SCRAPE THOSE CELILINGS! While horribly messy, it really wasn’t that difficult.  Now, do learn from my mistakes.  First, wear a hat - with your hair tucked into it.  Don’t question it.  Just do it.  I didn’t and my hair looked like a troll doll in a wind tunnel.  Second, wear goggles.  Embrace your mad scientist. Your eyes will thank you.  That stuff is not easy to get out of them.  Lastly, wear a mask.  This is another thing that is a no questions asked tip. You do not want to be breathing that stuff in.  You only get one set of lungs.  Take care of them.

Now, I took the easy route, because I didn’t want to wet, scrape, and then retexture the ceiling. It took a little more care to make sure I scraped it evenly, but it was worth it.  I used one of these.  You can pick it up at Home Depot for less than $20.

If you scrape and leave some texture, you will need to paint.  This is a commitment, because once you paint it, you will have a heck of a time scraping it down to the drywall.  That paint won’t budge.  It was worth it to me.  After scraping and smoothing until I felt it was consistent, I hit that baby with a coat of white ceiling paint. Call me a purist, but I like a white ceiling that matches my trim. 

I can’t get over how much cleaner the room feels!  And that’s not just because the bed is finally made in the lazy teenager’s room.