Taking popcorn off a ceiling

[Snowking]

So this past weekend I decided to paint my bedroom ceiling. That was a wrong move !!! I sprayed the ceiling and let it dry for about an hour and Went back and sprayed it in the opposite way. Wrong move number two. Went and ran around and when I got back home I found a 3 by3 part of my ceiling on my floor. So I scraped it all off took me all of a half hour to do it. Now I'm left with a raw ceiling. Does a guy need to skim coat it if I want to leave it flat or can I sand the remnants of the popcorn off and paint it. The ceiling is taped nice with the joints floated out. Thanks chad

[JeremyCampbell]

I have a painting business in the st cloud area.You can either get a touch up hopper from home depot and buy a bag of dry pop corn tex or take all the popcorn off by using a pump sprayer,and soak the water on the popcorn and it should scrape off like frosting on a cake.But if you painted it it won't be as easy.when you spray a popcorn ceiling with paint you go both directions and then move to another section.don't over do it.Systemic flows don't be an artist.Just apply the freakin paint.A home owners usual way out is the popcorn tex in a can but it can be a nightmare using it.

[Snowking]

I did the ceiling in my living room and kitchen the past summer It worked great. Guess I got a little over zellious In the paint part with out enought dry time in between coats.

[CAMAN]

I'd sand it out and see if you find any flaws. Touch up the flaws however is required and paint. If you think about it ceilings are just horizontal walls, so as long as they look good they should be fine.

You may want to use a primer first so if you find any bad areas you missed you can touch them up a bit easier.

[dougger222]

I tried to sand/scrape knock down off a ceiling and ended up calling a company to come out and skim coat it. For a few hundred bucks it was worth it!!! After they were done it was ready to paint.

[JohnMickish]

I just had that done in my kichen. They skim coated it and I went with knockdown. It looks AWSOME.

[RLangler]

I owned 2 homes with ginormous throw up-chunk style popcorn ceilings and I wanted to paint them. I got a hand pump garden pressure sprayer from Home Repo and lightly misted the ceilings in 8'X8' sections. Took 12 inch taping blade and scraped off the texture like a hot knife through butter, and caught the fall in a shallow box as I scraped. If you get it just the right softness/ moisture it comes off smooth without cutting into the taping job that was done before the popcorn. Then I just let it dry and paint it. If you have a few gouges in the original taping, they are easy to skim/ float with a little mud and a 12 inch blade, without needing to sand- as long as you keep the mud in the center of the blade and don't let it go out to the edges where it will leave curbs. I left the little inconsistencies since I was using a mediterranean hand plastered look/decor. These were huge homes and I got them scraped in less than a day.

[Snowking]

Had it taken care of Thursday nite. Cost me a case of finnegans. It is truly great having a lot of cousins because some one knows some one that does it for a living. Thanks for al the advice. Chad