Knock-Down Ceiling Texture [Complete Guide]

hi I'm Shannon from host improvements comm and today in this video I want to show you how I would spray and knock down a textured ceiling so by that I mean we've got our ceiling finished over here and you can see that it's basically flap and we want to end up with this type of a knockdown finish on it so the the beauty of these knockdown finishes is that your ceiling drywall finishing doesn't have to be quite as good you probably in the camera you can see there's a little bit of a ridge here a couple little screw spots are showing just a little bit but this texture will just kind of hide all that away so your ceiling you don't have to spend quite as much time finishing your ceiling and really that's the main reason these textures were came out with his lazy drywallers no I shouldn't say that it's just to hide the ceilings are always harder to get perfect and especially as a DIY err you're probably having some little imperfections and a knock down ceiling is kind of modern way that we used to use popcorn all the time now everybody wants to scrape the popcorn off because it's ugly and the knockdown is one of the more traditional ones at least in my area that people are using for the last 15 years or so so I'm going to show you how to do it some of the things that you're gonna need you're probably not going to already own so the main thing is you're gonna want to use a hopper gun to me if you're doing any amount of size this is really the tool you want to do there's some pretty cheap ones even on like hardware free for like 30 bucks really that that's all you need they may not be identical to this one but they're gonna have all pretty well the same functions this one is made by a sharpshooter or it's called sharpshooter one bye bye marshalltown and I've had this gun for quite a few years I don't do it kind of textured ceilings but if you buy one you can turn around and sell it probably get most your money back might be able to rent one borrow one whatever get a hopper gun okay so the basic functions on the hopper and they do vary a little bit this one has an adjustable sigh is like a pattern or for style here that you can change the size of your texture with your globs of mud and you got a trigger what the trigger does is you're gonna have an air hose hooked on here and air well as soon as you plug that hose in here is continuously going to flow out of this through this gun what the trigger does is actually allows the mud or the product you're using to drop down into the air stream and blow out okay so you're gonna fill the hopper up with your product you could use you can really just use even all-purpose drywall mud if that's what you've got on hand I'll kind of show you the consistency here in a few minutes make some water in it or whatever get to the rate consistency you can use that there is texture products that you can use I think they just basically are a little tougher if you're painting over it anyways after it really doesn't matter use mud it's cheaper so this one also has an adjustment over here to allow you to only screech squeeze the trigger so far so if you want to use that you can I just have it wide open I'm used to used to what I like to do with the trigger so I just love that wide open you're gonna couple your air hose I'll just show you here when you couple your air hose on what I meant about the air coming right through right away most guns some of the cheaper ones might not have this but I would recommend you put it on there it's just quick little ball valve here to adjust your air flow as far as your air pressure what I used to always do is run about 45 pounds or so on my air compressor and then I just flipped this valve wide open and that's what I did all the time what I've started to do now is I run my compressor where I normally would for anything else you know 100 110 pounds and I use this valve to control my air flow or my air pressure and that takes a little bit of playing around with those so if you if it's easier for you just use your regulator on your compressor but I run this set about a third open I find that does the texture that I like to do so as far as air compressors you need a pretty pretty good compressor you're not going to use a little trim compressor with a single tank or something like that that's just not going to keep up I've got a dual tank it might even be a two horse I can't remember the the capacity of the compressor but you know a fairly heavy compressor with the two cylinders on it and it won't keep up you use a lot air doing this so what you have to do like in my case I wouldn't use anything smaller than what I'm using right now and every now and again I can tell when my pressures getting low the globs get a little bigger and and and I just I've got to let the compressor catch up so so once you plug the holes in you want to basically be pretty much ready or if you have this valve here once you flip that open you pretty much want to be ready to go so that your compressor isn't running forever and it will run almost continuously but every now and again you got to let it catch up so so that's the gun I don't think there's too much more I can tell you with this gun basically comes apart I just go to the car wash that's the easiest thing to do and wash it right out make sure you get it washed out really good so that's the gun for the knockdown so we're gonna we're gonna blow some little bubbles or little mounds of mud onto the ceiling and then before they dry we're gonna go and run along there with this either that you can use a trowel you can use a knife if you have a nice big knife and I usually like to have a small knife around just in case I gotta get in a little corner or something in this room we've got a little bit smaller spot over by that piece of duct work coming out of the ceiling so I'm gonna need this just to kind of get into that smaller spot so I usually have that in my back pocket and I prefer to use a trowel it's whatever you want if you're if you're more comfortable using the knife use a knife the main thing is just make sure that this is straight or if it isn't like if these two corners curved one way or the other make sure that those aren't the curved areas and going against the ceiling or you're gonna leave ridges okay so there are special poly paddles that you can use for this but if you got this kind of stuff it'll work just as well now for the texture itself so I like to mix it up so it'll basically pretty much goop off my spatula here okay so you can kind of see that what kind of texture you have there it doesn't run like water but it's it's close okay kind of like pancake mix I guess really this is almost I could be just a little bit wetter but this whole this will be fine so like any other drywall mud whether you buy it in a box we're gonna in a big bucket like this you're gonna want to add some water so you'll need a mixing paddle of some kind and a probably a half inch drill for if you have any decent size of paddle and you're gonna add a little bit of water at a time mix it mix it mix it till you're happy with the consistency that you have okay I've already mixed this it's it's gonna be good enough because I already sprayed part of the ceiling now just before we get totally going I'm gonna also set up and I'm gonna blow a little bit on this piece of cardboard so you can really see what I'm talking about because it's gonna be hard in the video to see the white pretty much white product that I'm spraying on the white ceiling okay so if I spray it on here you can get a bit of an idea of the amount of texture you want I don't like a real heavy knockdown some people would say this isn't quite enough but I like this finer finish so you'll kind of see the amount that I'll spray on here to get that if you're not happy with that you're just gonna adjust your gun maybe to a bigger bigger orifice or maybe you know adjust your compressor air a little bit too one way or the other to get what you want so I suggest that you have a spot you can kind of try it on let it dry a bit hit it with your trowel just so you get a bit of an idea before you start putting it on the ceiling now if you spray it on the ceiling and you're not happy before you knock it down you could scrape it all off and stir it over once you knock it down it gets a little tough because it starts to really get dried out them so so I'd say practice on a piece of drywall or cardboard or whatever you can something you can play with a little bit beforehand what am I missing this ceiling I've got it primed and one coat of paint usually that's how I leave it like texture knocked down I leave it that way some people paint overtop it whatever you want to do okay yeah so I'm pretty much ready you can see I've got something up all the way around to protect the walls it doesn't necessarily have to hang as far down as what I've got this is just what I had but you you probably wanted a good three or four feet down because you're gonna get some splatter down the side you can see here on this black it's easy to see like I've got even some fine mist way down here but the most parts in the first two or three feet and there's no way of getting away from that it's just easier especially if you're by yourself to mask it off and and hang some poly or whatever up there so that you don't have a bunch of cleaning you do after okay I think we're gonna rearrange the camera just a little bit and I'm gonna load the gun up we're gonna do a test and then we're gonna get out it I've done enough talking okay so like said we just want to put some material in our hopper when you're I'm just gonna mention this when you're spraying so so what I'm spraying I'm gonna be up here like this right that's why the gun is or the hopper is positioned the way it is so it's not in the way you can turn it if you were spraying this on the wall or something but this is for sealing so I'm gonna be spraying like this right okay and I want to go kind of side to side some people go in circles I I don't know I don't get that concept but I just like to go to side to side normally in this room I would start at this wall and I just walk my way back but because of the camera angle I'm gonna kind of do this half of the room and then flip and do this half so so you're gonna be spraying you want to try to avoid spraying across on a real angle you want to stay as straight up and as you can because your your spray pattern gets goofy and you get kind of goofy stringy looking lines so I just wanted to mention that just try to keep perpendicular to the ceiling song so we'll throw some muck in here and I'm not gonna need a whole lot for this little area here okay and just you know give it a good shake make sure rolls down in the hopper if if you get spraying along and all sudden it's it's not putting out enough material you're either out of material or you just need to give it a good shake and let it get run back down in here again so so I think I'm good to go oh we're gonna do the test that's a weird idea so I'll hook this up and I'll do a little test pattern on the wall or on that cardboard just so you can see kind of what you're looking for so you're kind of looking for that sort of thing I actually probably need a little bit more air pressure I'm getting a lot of little fine ones but you kind of want you know this sort of size or that's what I like but if you get about that much coverage that's kind of the amount of coverage I'm looking for now it's probably too wet to really do this on but I'll just try it here now you get the idea so you're just kind of basically smearing it along there now obviously it really stands out because it's white on brown but when you're that white on white through whatever it just gives a nice textured finish I'm probably even a little later than I normally would one you also want to have a wet rag long because as you're doing this you kind of get a buildup of the dry crumbs on the back and if you don't keep it clean they end up on the ceiling okay so I'm just gonna give myself a little bit more air pressure and a little bit more coverage than that actually I could probably do it here and show you now that's that's a little finer that's a little better for what I was looking for I can hear my compressor cut on so I'm just gonna let it catch up and then I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna shoot this okay here we go so you kind of see how fast it goes I'm not sure if you can see in the camera the coverage I'm getting this is what I would call pretty perfect for what I like some not I'm just looking right now for any little thin spots I might have a couple here I'll just touch up and then I'm gonna flip around and do the other side here so thanks I might need just a little bit more material okay I'm gonna hit these couple little spots that are a little thinner and then I'm gonna do the other half you'll notice when I was doing that I I liked to pulsate my trigger some guys will just squeeze and and go but I just find I have better control if I do that and I think it also helps the compressor to be able to stay caught up when I got to this area that I had already done I don't know if you know where to side just tried to get the hopper in the way to act as a bit of a shield so that I wasn't getting too much spray out onto the other side I just kind of overlapped into it a little bit I got pretty good coverage so I think we're good for spraying and you can see you you end up with someone you know there's just no two ways about it so I'm gonna set this out of the way and depending on the conditions in the room where you're spraying heat humidity air flow will depend on how long this takes to dry and is ready to knock down now you don't want it dry but you don't want it to too wet this this kind of smeared a little bit extra because it was so wet when I hit it this stuff that I did the second time I don't know if I can really smooth it out on the cardboard because the cardboard is a little wet but that's not too bad so that that stuff there is getting close to the right dryness to knock down which means this first stuff I did is getting close now you can kind of I don't I don't know how to explain it they look shiny the goblets look a little shiny when they're real wet and they look just a little bit duller when they're starting to get set up just three amount so we're getting really close right now there's it's pretty stagnant in here and pretty cool but I wouldn't go in texture or spray a whole bunch of area until you have a feel for how much you can do at a time or if you've got some a second person that can be knocking it down sorry behind you this room itself I think is about 20 by six or something so it's 120 square feet so I would have definitely sprayed this whole room in one shot myself and would have had time to go back and do it so you know most cases if you got a couple hundred square feet at a time you're probably probably alright if you're working by yourself but it is easier if you've got somebody else that can just fall behind you and then you can just kind of keep going so I'm probably getting real close now the one nice thing with the I was saying that you can buy different little knockdown knife sort of things the nice thing with them is they have a screw on spot where you can put a broom handle on or something so it's easier to reach the ceilings just a little bit high for me to reach so I've got to get up on this stool but you're not putting a bunch of pressure on you're just kind of gliding and cross they're keeping it on I don't know what that is like a 10 or 15 degree angle you'll kind of get a feel for it once you do it so you can see how you get all this crusty kind of stuff on the backside of the knife and it's that kind of falls off some of it when you're going but you just kind of keep that clean it'll work out a lot better for you just try not to do that I know let your trial go rate flat on the surface every now and again when you're up that high it's hard to see I can see right here I missed a little strip if you step down it's easier to see it instead of bring it up where you're working okay so you just go along keep doing that before you know what you're done sometimes when you're working against the wall if you want till you get used to it if you want you can cut just come out like this it really doesn't matter which direction you go some guys like to go different directions so you don't get any kind of a pattern in it I don't like when I put it on this late I don't really find it I end up with a pattern early to it but some guys figured you do so ok so that's looking pretty good hit this back here because this is where it'll be drier notice you can see in the camera you get a little bit of a I see some spot I don't know if you can really tell there's a little bit of a fine like almost little loose bits of dust hanging after I've done it and I just once it dries I just go with a clean broom and knock off those loose ones [Applause] so I know I've got that corner left to do there yeah right here you can kind of see it's got these little flakes hanging down that's just kind of what rolls off the back edge and I've got a little bit of a bare spot in behind this pipe but that's in this case that's gonna get covered up later anyway so I'm not gonna worry about it but I would have just fired the gun up and gave that a little shot so I think I got them all I'm just looking back here on the first stuff I did to make sure I didn't miss any little bumps that sprayed back yeah pretty good so when it's wet you can you can see that kind of that drag pattern quite a bit more once it dries it blends away a little bit more but it's wet it looks a little darker yeah I think I got it so like I said once this dries a little bit I'll just take a broom and just slightly kind of dust it off just to get rid of any little loose chunks and then we'll be set so I don't think there's anything else I can tell you or show you this is how I do knock down like always I'm gonna have guys in the comments that say that isn't how you do it blah blah blah whatever this works trust me you can do it this way if you I've got I probably got white stuff all over my face but anyways if you if you like the video I appreciate it if you click the thumbs up you could scribe to our channel if you haven't already this little subscribe tab just below me and once you hit that subscribe tab there'll be a little bell icon come up if you click that that'll give you some notifications every time we post a video or some content you can tune in right away and know what we're what we're talking about and what we're doing so appreciate you watching and you can if you need any help on this like if I didn't answer something sometimes I skip something and don't realize just come to the forum you can ask any question there on any subject and we can help you out 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Channel: HouseImprovements

Views: 293,845

Keywords: california, ceiling, texture, spray, diy, how to, complete, steps, guide, knockdown, knock, down, air, compressor, mud, home, ceilings, interior, scrape, finish, refinish, paint, prep, howto, house, improvement, compound, drywall, lite, all purpose, mix, consistency, thick, stipple, hide, wall, orange, peal, peel, blow, on, rough

Id: n5p45xhotsI

Length: 24min 36sec (1476 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 19 2020