What To Use To Clean Ceiling After Removing Popcorn

And so, those cruddy popcorn ceilings are gone thank you to lots of scrapage (tutorial here) and arm strength but now what? Y'all've uncovered blank drywall and all of the drywall mud (those white stripes) but the ceiling isn't exactly polish...yet.

If you only painted over the ceiling at this point, you'd see lots of ridges, lines, and shallow craters - the lines of the mud and the craters left behind from halfway filling in the screw holes holding the drywall upwardly.

Not pretty and definitely not the result you lot want after spending all of that time scraping.

Annotation: The following method of finishing the ceilings came after some trial and fault, very unfortunately. We spent a few extra hours doing things the wrong fashion...or mayhap just a less efficient mode that I won't get into because information technology's worthless. But so yous know... ;)

Hither'south how we finished our ceilings - the most efficient (and least messy) style.

First, we filled in all of the screw craters with spackling.

At that place was still popcorn texture left upwards within these craters after scraping but at that place'due south no need to wipe that out earlier you fill up.

We used a 2-inch putty knife and ane quick swipe with this putty* to fill in each crater; that was all it took.

Y'all'll just want to make sure you get enough putty in at that place to fill up the entire crater. Y'all can fifty-fifty overfill it. It'll dry and get sanded affluent later. Too, brand certain you use brand new spackling to do this. Older spackling is more dry (though sometimes y'all can add together water to information technology to liven it upward) and it's much harder to swipe on. Since you'll be filling tons of craters, yous'll desire to brand life as piece of cake as y'all can and utilise super shine, new spackling. Trust us because, sadly, we'd know.

Once the spackling dried, we then sanded the mud lines until there were no ridges (only run your finger over the edges of the mud lines after a few passes with the sander to see when you've got it polish). Along with the mud lines, we sanded the crater holes that we had only filled. Using a medium-grit (120) sanding screen*, we just had to go over each ridge/crater a couple of times before it was smooth. Information technology wasn't an exorbitant amount of sanding...thank goodness. And bonus: if you accidentally left a little popcorn texture behind during scraping, no worries, this pace will obliterate it.

Two VERY of import FYIs for this office of the process. i) If you don't want drywall dust EVERYWHERE, this vacuum sander* is a must-accept. It attaches to a utility vacuum (similar a Shop-Vac) and sucks upwardly all of the dust you sand off. We bought it off Amazon after it was recommended to u.s.a. and I would have paid twice what we did for information technology because it was that worth information technology. Really and truly. We started roofing the floors when we beginning started sanding but realized it was completely unnecessary after there wasn't whatsoever dust on the plastic or even on our dress. So so nosotros went rogue and didn't cover annihilation. Ha! ii) If you lot're going the sander + vacuum route (why wouldn't yous?!), you lot will absolutely need to buy HEPA bags* for your vacuum to catch all of the dust. Abso-freaking-lutely. If you don't, yous will offset sanding and minutes afterwards, your vacuum will commencement choking on the super fine particles of drywall dust AND commencement spewing them out into the room. Ask us how we know. That was the death of our former Shop Vac (that we had had for ten years) and why we had to buy this new one*...which is awesome, we love it, but however...HEPA bags.*

Don't forget.

After sanding, we gave the ceiling a once over with a damp sponge mop only to remove any dust. If you don't apply the sander + vacuum route (once more, why wouldn't you?!) you'll probably have more dust to wipe off and then you might want to go for a twice over.

Then it was prime fourth dimension. Nosotros used this Kilz two Primer. If you're painting ceilings over floors that are getting torn out and y'all don't care too much about tiny flecks of primer and pigment getting all over yoself, a regular paint roller with extension rod will work for y'all just fine. And honestly, that'due south the easiest way to go. But, if you desire a little more than protection, we started out using this roller plus shield and really liked it. The cover part pivots so yous can move it effectually depending on the angle you're painting. (We used to have a stationary cover similar this and it was hard to make certain you didn't scratch the ceiling with the cover. You had to really pay attending to the angle.) Sadly, I propped that roller upward along a wall in a bathroom a few days afterwards we bought it and it fell...and broke. And so, for the remainder of our painting, we covered the floors, our arms, and hair and painted sans cover.

Mid-priming:

Once primed, nosotros painted with Sherwin-Williams Chief Hide flat paint tinted to their Pure White. It was recommended to us later we searched for an ultra flat paint. We actually love how flat it truly is (a lot of flat paints these days aren't as flat equally they used to exist because everyone wants their paint to exist scrubbable which means it'south got to accept some sort of sheen to it...so I heard) but nosotros did need ii coats of paint for full-coverage. This is afterward the 1 coat of primer and one glaze of paint:

Still slightly splotchy.

And this is what this ceiling looks like today, all finished:

It's hard to photo how good they look. As you can run across, we didn't really pay attention to keeping pigment off of the crown molding since it's likewise going to become painted. But, we did remove all of the vents, scrape the popcorn underneath, paint underneath, and and then spray pigment the vents white to friction match the ceilings. I did this on all of the vents in our old house and, for the vii years we lived there, they all held upward fantastic, never needing to be touched-upward. All hail spray paint.

Nosotros are So happy with how our ceilings turned out and, once again, there'southward no regret here in taking on the projection. We've got the kitchen and den ceilings left to do but nosotros're waiting on a wall to come up down first before we finish them up. More on that later on!

As always, send me any questions and let me know if I demand to clarify annihilation! If you have popcorn ceilings that you've been dreaming of making smooth, Do IT! I hope yous, you'll love it! We will cheer you lot on! :D

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