If the drywall ceiling texture material in your house is beginning to crumble or turn yellow with age, you may be able to remove it. A ceiling installed before 1979 may have asbestos in it. If this is the case with your ceiling, you must hire a professional to remove it. If your textured, or popcorn, ceiling is just plaster, you can remove it yourself, but it takes careful scraping to remove all the texture and prepare the ceiling for a new coat of paint.
Instructions
1. Send a sample of the ceiling material to an asbestos testing company to check for asbestos content. If you have asbestos, hire a professional to remove it. Another option is to paint over it.
2. Remove as much furniture as possible from the room. Put drop cloths over everything that remains.
3. Fill a small garden sprayer with water. Spray a small section of the ceiling. Start anywhere you want in the room, but it is usually easiest to start along a wall or in a corner. Allow the water to soak into the texture.
4. Remove the soaked ceiling texture with a floor scraper. If you prefer, use a wide-bladed putty knife. Place the flat edge of the scraping tool against the ceiling and pry off a small piece of popcorn texture. Once you have a cleared area, gently push the flat edge under the texture to separate it from the ceiling. If the textured material is hard to remove, spray more water on it and let it soak a bit longer.
5. Continue spraying new sections, soaking them and scraping off the all the texture from the ceiling. Do not spray on too much water or scrape too hard on the ceiling or you may remove the paper coating the drywall on the ceiling.
6. Wipe the entire ceiling with clean water in a sponge. Change the water frequently. When you finish, run a dampened finger across the drywall. If you have white dust on your fingertip, rinse the ceiling again. Keep rinsing until the dust is all gone.
7. Patch any cracks in the ceiling with drywall mud applied in a thin layer with a drywall blade. Allow the mud to dry. Lightly sand any rough edges with fine-grit sandpaper. Wipe away any dust created by the sandpaper.
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