The small town Colorado girl who’s obsessed with home and everything that entails! I’m a creative, a decorator, a day dreamer, a huge fan of scones, and I’m passionate about loving where I live and making a home.
I'm Shayna
When we initially bought the Willow house, it was really stinky. It wasn’t really a smell you could identify as just one thing, but rather layers of odd smells combining into this gross odor. As soon as you walked in the door it hit you, and everyone who walked through it in the beginning would always tell us how bad it smelled…. and we agreed! It’s just one of the fun perks of remodeling a neglected home.
Our initial plan to tackle the smell, and to start demo’ing the house, was to scrape the popcorn ceilings. All that texture holds bad smells, and several parts of the popcorn ceiling was coated in either grease (in the kitchen), or soot from the downstairs fireplace. A few spots also had very obvious water damage. Knowing it would be so much easier to haul out the scraped off popcorn ceilings when we rolled up the carpet, we started on the ceilings first.
Practically every room in the house had them, so we started upstairs and worked our way through the house. Removing the popcorn isn’t a hard process, and you can get it done with minimal tools, but it does make a big mess.
Here’s what we used to remove the popcorn:
First thing we did, was fill up a new garden sprayer with hot water. Then, we worked our way across the ceiling, spraying the popcorn in sections. We’d wait a minute for the water to soak in, then used our large putty knife to start scraping. We also wore a respirator mask just to make sure we weren’t breathing in any dust.
It was easy to get a good feel of whether or not the popcorn had absorbed enough of the water. If it had, the texture would come off in descent sized pieces, with minimal effort. If it din’t have enough water, it was really hard to scrape and find a place to have the putty knife get underneath the texture. If it wasn’t wet enough, we’d spray it a little more, letting the water have a few seconds to absorb.
You can tell in the picture below that the popcorn ceiling is plenty wet. At this point, it literally comes off in sheets with the putty knife. The drywall underneath dries quickly, no harm done.
The process really doesn’t take as long as you’d think, and after 20 minutes, the ceiling in the basement living room was drastically different…
It’s definitely a messy job, so if you’re planning on doing this to a room where you’re currently living, I would put plastic drop cloths over everything, and use a pan to scrape the popcorn texture into, rather than letting it fall on the floor. But because we were planning on cutting the carpet and rolling it into strips as soon as the ceiling in each room was finished, we didn’t care about the mess.
The one area that I didn’t take pictures of, is the ceiling right next to the top of the wall. In that area, we were left with a small section of popcorn ceiling that was hanging down. The putty knife didn’t work great at removing it, so we used a razor blade to cut it off, running the blade in the crease between the wall and ceiling. It left a really clean edge.
We worked our way throughout the house and each room instantly felt taller, bigger and so much better! The next step, was pulling up the carpet and pad, which I sadly didn’t get any pictures of. We worked our way throughout the house, cutting the carpet into 3′ or 4′ sections with the razor blade. Cutting it down made it much easier to haul out of the house. We did the same thing with the pad. And let me just tell you how gross it is to see what’s underneath the pad… I’m pretty sure the people who lived in the house before didn’t believe in vacuuming, or they didn’t own one. In the heavy walkway areas, the pad had actually disintegrated and came up in tiny pieces. Utterly disgusting.
We quickly were left with a really lovely blank space…
Here’s a few before and “during” for comparison:
Before:
Progress:
Before:
Progress:
The smell instantly improved throughout the house and the first demo job was complete! Next up, we brought in an electrician to add some lighting, and a plumber/ HVAC technician to install central air throughout the house.
More to come soon…
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Join me as I share several easy to implement ideas that will give your home a breath of fresh air and leave you feeling excited about the changes you see by the end of the week!
This is so fun to watch!
Perseverance and so much fun to have creative ideas with a “blank” starting point. Have fun and Merry Christmas!
It looks wonderful. What a great job you did. All your efforts are paying off. Were you at all concerned about asbestos in the popcorn ceiling?
Thank you! Our ceilings didn’t have asbestos in them, so we couldn’t wait to remove the popcorn! It looks so much better without it!
I hope you checked for asbestos in your ceiling. You have to have that removed by a qualified hazmat professional. Or you will be exposed to it
Our ceilings didn’t have asbestos, so we’re good! It makes such a huge difference having the popcorn gone!
I think I might try removing some popcorn ceiling! Good job and really ready to fix up “purty.”
Great Job! Excited to see more!! Merry Christmas!!
Looks like a new house already! What a difference!
Did you test your popcorn ceiling for asbestos? Apparently, it was used in ceilings until the mid ‘80s.
We’re thinking off removing our popcorn, but haven’t tested it yet. Your home looks so much better without the ceiling and carpeting. Enjoying your posts…thanks!
Our ceilings didn’t have asbestos, but if you think yours might, I would definitely test them. The house looks so much better without the popcorn ceilings!
One of those DIY jobs that is so messy but so worth it! Excellent job.
I’ve used warm water and fabric softener.
You rock girl! I know this place is on it’s way to amazing with your touch on it!
Great improvement already!! Can’t wait to see what’s next. Thanks for sharing the process 🙂
Just emptying the house is a major improvement in both look AND smell!! I’m so excited to see what you do with the house. It’s going to be GORGEOUS!!! Blessings from Missouri!
Will different types of paints (oil) prevent the water from absorbing into the popcorn texture stuff?
I do not know what type of paint we have through the house. I would hope latex….
Yes! If the ceiling is painted, it makes it much more difficult to remove. We had one room, the laundry room, where the texture was painted and the water wouldn’t absorb. I didn’t love the outcome after it was scraped, so we’re having the ceiling re-coated and then textured. I would think you would have latex paint…
Looking Great ~ Happy for you ! Excited about all your progress.
Merry Christmas to you two!
I am loving your updates! We are closing on a house the end of December that is in need of some TLC. We will have to rip up carpets that are from the 70’s so I’m very nervous to see what is underneath them. The house also definitely has a smell! Hopefully we will be able to remedy that. Your updates have me excited!
I am so amazed at all you have done!!! This is going really well (because I’m not doing the work?!) this is a very big house!! It already looks better. I’m looking forward to these mini reveals. I think you give us just the right amount of before and after photos. What an adventure!!
Looks so much different & better already! Can’t wait to see each new post on the progress you get done. I know it will be gorgeous when you are done! Merry Christmas!!
[…] The only way to help this kitchen, was to take the room down to bare walls and start over. We did this right after we scrapped the popcorn off of the ceilings. […]
[…] we had scraped off the popcorn ceilings earlier, we hired a handyman to come in and retexture the ceilings to match the existing knock down […]
[…] First thing we needed to do, was scrape the last of the popcorn from the ceiling. Todd taped off the doorway leading into our bedroom, opened the window, put on his mask and started scraping. You can see our tutorial on how we removed the popcorn ceilings from the rest of the house here. […]