Just finished removing popcorn ceilings.

A gentleman had a leak in his roof which caused part of his ceiling to stain and fall in.  He also had drywall tape turning loose in his enclosed garage due to humidity and moisture in that area.  I tried to talk him into replacing the popcorn acoustical ceiling with a more modern knockdown texture, but he insisted on keeping the popcorn texture.  One of the few people I have ever met who actually like that style of texture.

So we scraped the popcorn ceiling in the living room, cut out the bad section, replaced it with new drywall, taped, finished and resprayed popcorn texture all in one day.  We came back the next day, scraped down the popcorn ceilings in the garage, secured the drywall tape that was coming loose and resprayed the popcorn acoustical texture on the ceiling.

We receive a lot of calls concerning popcorn ceilings.  It is nearly impossible to patch a popcorn ceiling and make it blend back in the with original ceiling texture.  The popcorn will be different colors, the new area will be whiter, and the sprayed on thickness will be different.  It is always better to scrape, repair and then re-texture than to do a crappy patch job.  Click on the step by step instructions I've written to be a DIY and learn to remove popcorn ceilings.  I've also included hints on how to remove a popcorn ceiling that has been painted.

 Example of a knockdown texture                                                          Example of a stipple texture