Every decade has an interior home design fad and one of them for the 1970s was popcorn ceilings. Along with the green shag carpeting and Avocado colored appliances, homeowners with this ceiling finish want it banished from their homes. Fortunately for those homeowners, there are a few options to replace popcorn ceilings with a fresh, more modern look.
Available Options
Unfortunately, if you simply take a roller full of paint and begin applying it to your popcorn ceiling, it is just going to make it look worse. Any color amplifies the dips and divots, making the "popcorn" effect of the ceiling that much more noticeable. So, before you use the painting option to replace popcorn ceilings, you have to scrape it off.
Scraping the popcorn texture off is easy, but messy. All you need is a water sprayer, ladder, 12-inch drywall taping knife to scrape off the popcorn finish, a couple of tarps to catch the falling "popcorn" and some sandpaper to smooth it out. Wetting the ceiling before scraping it off helps it to come off more easily and eliminate much of the dust.
Be aware that when using this option to replace popcorn ceilings, some parts of the ceiling will remain uneven and you will end up with a ding or two from the drywall taping knife. To fix that issue, simply skim over the large gouges with a bit of drywall mud, allow it to dry and sand it down with a bit of sandpaper.
Another option to replace a popcorn ceiling is to hang new drywall. This is extremely labor intensive because you have to remove as much of the popcorn finish as you can before hanging the drywall. Then you have to hang, tape, mud and sand the drywall. This is a great option if there is damage to the ceiling itself.
The final of the three options to replace popcorn ceilings costs a little bit more than paint and drywall, but the finished look is dramatically beautiful. The final option, which requires less labor but a little bit more money, is to install wainscoting, also called beadboard, over the ceiling. Again, you have to scrape as much of the popcorn finish off as possible. After that, it is just a matter of cutting the wainscoting to fit, applying a little glue and nailing it up.
No matter which one of the options you choose to replace popcorn ceilings, just be prepared that it is going to be a messy project. The end result of not having an outdated ceiling that ruins the look of your interior design is worth the work.
Tags: replace popcorn, popcorn ceilings, replace popcorn ceilings, option replace, option