How to Remove Popcorn Ceilings | DIY HOME REMODEL

damn I do care I started in drywall in 1979 and part of that process of going through a 15-year more career of it was spraying a product to texture called acoustic onto ceilings back in the late 70s and early 80s acoustic otherwise known as popcorn cottage cheese oatmeal and you can see it right here on the ceiling that was sprayed out basically 1979 this has not been painted over the years after spraying it on for many years years later people wanted it taken off and a new texture put on because over time it gets dirty you have to paint it spiders build webs up there it's hard to clean as this stuff starts coming off earlier it was a vermiculite product with mud drywall mud later these things are little styrofoam pellets sprayed with drywall mud we use a big machine and sprayed it like crazy well once it came to the time when people didn't want it anymore they called people to scrape it off homeowners if they didn't know any better try to scrape it off dry it's a process it's dusty it takes forever they often use smaller knives and by the time they're done with even a small room the shoulder is shot or wore out oftentimes people will come and go hey come in and rescue me here I started this project and I know I'm doing it wrong show me how to do it right the best way the absolute best way to do it is do like we've done here this Queen all the walls out with tape and painters plastic and this is nine by four hundred feet it did this entire room it'll do several more bedrooms if you have higher ceilings you have to get 12-foot plastic by the same length usually 400 feet so once you've done that you've gone and masked all round with masking tape and that painters plastic you totally made a plastic tent that will protect your walls and other things you have on the wall like the television set over there or framed pictures then you're ready to do a very exciting thing when I first start doing it I use a pump sprayer a garden sprayer made sure I cleaned all the roundup out of it first and went spray it down it took a while but the moisture gets to it and as we'll see later it makes the job much more easier now I use that airless finally Donna me why don't I use that air let's have a airless sprayer and just run water through it and just darken it wet it down and you can see the color difference over there I've already sprayed that and it turns gray now here's the thing you need to know also sometimes over the years people painted it because they got sick of that dust that accumulated and it falling down they painted it that's really hard to get off so the best way again is to use moisture with an airless or a pump sprayer get that saturated in there it starts impregnating the pain and after a while you'll be able to scrape it off also the trouble with scraping it off dry is people will try it and they'll end up gouging the drywall and then you have a bunch of drywall or repairs it's best to get a bigger knife and then you can just take off huge sections once it's wet it'll virtually just peel off another good part about doing it wet is it takes all the dust out and it's interesting acoustic comes from spraying this and large corn soda calls where it cut the reverb down and it kind of transferred over into a residential construction but nobody really wants anymore it's funny because we used to spray glitter the mud would still be wet and we had this crank thing you can add a air thing to your your air equipment to and it would shoot up these little silver stars or gold stars and people thought that's awesome but later on again they got tired of it so we're gonna go through a process we've already visqueen to all the walls off use masking tape use drop claws on the floor to catch a lot of that moisture but most of the moisture is going to go into the because I was in drywall have a pair of stilts if you don't you can get on a ladder once it's wet enough you'll find out and you'll just gently take your blade keep it flat not too much like that or old gal's adramal and then just start scraping so we use our airless they're really dampened this acoustic at this point we can find out if it's ready to go if we do this the beauty of that it has enough moisture to get this texture off but it doesn't have too much moisture to impregnate the drywall itself back in the 70s and early 80s nothing but 5/8 thickness sheetrock was put on ceilings because it was a fire code it was much thicker and it wouldn't sag between 24 inch centers since then they come out with a ceiling board which is only 1/2 inch but it has a lot of fiberglass fibers in it so it's a nice egg also either way you're really not going to affect the integrity of this drywall behind the texture with the moisture you can see it gets moist but as long as the paper doesn't peel off then you're good to go the beauty of it is this just peels off and there's no dust whatsoever if you're worried about a little bit of dust go ahead and get yourself a mask or eye protection I might also add if you feel that there's any possibility of asbestos in this stuff go ahead and have somebody test it for you and if you're not comfortable and scraping it off in any form of wet or dry certainly not dry because it will create that dust and those look like the bestest fibers will get in your lungs if you don't have the proper protection then if you don't want to do it go ahead and hire a professional group of people or usually very adept at asbestos abatement they'll come in Granite it's gonna be expensive but it's a peace of mind especially you have children in the home and you don't want any exposure whatsoever so at this point we're just gonna go through out this house it's good to get a wide knife and just start peeling this [Applause] now if you get to a point where it's it would be a little more difficult like it seems drier one or two things you can grab your airless add a little more moisture to it at this point is something going to take much or you're on a scene that's been taped and muddied the paper drywall will come off a lot easier once you get to a seam like here a corner angle where that mud was it'll be a little drier and may takes a little bit more moisture to peel off for instance there is a butt joint right here at this point it has enough moisture to peel right off so you may not encounter that if you do just realize sometimes this is drier now you can see the butt joint here were two pieces that come together and there's the tape you don't want to scrape so hard that you start to gouge into that tape because then you'll have to read tape that scene so you can see we drop the lights down so we could get all the acoustic off at that point you're gonna have wires hanging down remember you're gonna be putting a lot of moisture on that scene so go ahead and shut the power off to those another thing once you start scraping you're gonna be scraping like this be careful your blade these very sharp doesn't hit the insulation on those wires that are hanging down from not only the smoke alarm but the light to ceiling light so all in all is a very simple job if you have just a few right tools anybody can do it homeowner professional whatever just remember the best way to do it is with moisture get it wet enough so there's no dust and there's really no effort taking it off that's the way it should come off very simple make sure you do good masking if you have any moisture sensitive things in the room outside of the masking go ahead and remove those because it gets very humid in fact may bring some plants into get them going without humidity so have fun have any questions shoot me a message help answer those for you otherwise I gotta start scraping and you know all in all it's almost kind of enjoyable to get this old stuff off that this has been on there for forty years does this house about 1979 which was the same year was married so the funny thing is I sprayed it on and now grape in it off so to talk about job security yeah maybe I was thinking ahead so until next time DIY do cool stay with you stay healthy stay puff and I'll see you next time

Channel: DIY Duke

Views: 2,576,181

Keywords: DIY, How-To, Instructions, Help, Tutorial, How, To, popcorn, acoustic, ceiling, ceilings, easy, fast

Id: LLb4mTC1_dI

Length: 9min 19sec (559 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 04 2020