Popcorn Ceiling Removal and Plaster Repair in Phoenix
The textured ceiling from the '70s, scraped and retextured. Older plaster walls patched the way plaster needs.
Arizona ROC #366903 · Licensed, Bonded & Insured
Popcorn ceilings date a room more than anything else in it. Removing one is messy but not complicated: the texture gets wetted and scraped, the ceiling gets skim-coated, retextured in a modern knockdown or left smooth, and painted.
Removal
The room gets emptied or the furniture gets covered, and the floor and walls get sealed in plastic, because wet popcorn comes off in sheets and lands everywhere. The texture gets sprayed with water until it's soft, then scraped off with a wide blade down to the drywall. A ceiling that was painted after the popcorn went on doesn't soak up water as well and takes longer.
What's under the popcorn is usually rough: the builder sprayed it to hide the drywall seams, so the seams and screw heads weren't finished. The ceiling gets skim-coated to flatten it, sanded, and then it's your choice: a light knockdown or orange-peel to match the walls, or smooth, which costs more because every flaw shows on a smooth ceiling under daylight. Then primer and paint.
A ceiling with a few loose or stained spots doesn't always need the whole thing scraped. Loose spots get scraped and re-textured to match the popcorn around them, and stains get sealed with a stain-blocking primer and painted. Popcorn that's falling in sheets usually means water, and the leak gets found first.
Plaster
Houses in Phoenix from the 1950s and earlier often have plaster walls, over wood lath or straight over block. Plaster cracks differently from drywall and patches differently. Drywall compound on plaster shrinks, cracks and lets go. Loose plaster gets screwed back to the lath with plaster washers or cut out, the lath or block gets a bonding coat, and the patch gets built up in plaster so it's as hard as the wall around it. Plaster walls are usually smooth or lightly textured, and the patch gets finished to match.
Problems we fix on this page
- Want the popcorn ceiling removed
- Popcorn ceiling falling in spots
- Popcorn ceiling stained
- Plaster cracking
- Plaster falling off in spots
- Plaster bulging
How it starts
Send a photo of the ceiling and tell us the age of the house. We send back a fixed price, you say go, and Levi shows up to do it.
Questions
- Can you cover it instead of scraping?
- Yes. New drywall screwed up through the popcorn into the joists, then taped and finished. Less mess than scraping, and it's the better choice when the popcorn is painted or in rough shape. The ceiling ends up half an inch lower, which nobody notices.
- How long does it take and how bad is the mess?
- A bedroom is a day to scrape and skim, a second day to texture, prime and paint. The mess is real but it stays inside the plastic. You'll want to be out of that room for both days.
- Can I do it myself?
- Scraping, yes, if you don't mind the mess. The skim coat and the new texture are where it goes wrong, because a ceiling shows every bump and every ridge under daylight. Most people who call us have already scraped.
Related pages
Drywall repair
Holes, cracks, water stains and dents, patched and textured so they're hard to spot.
Texture matching
The reason patches show is texture. We match orange-peel, knockdown and skip-trowel so the repair is hard to spot.
Older Phoenix homes
Block walls, two-prong outlets, galvanized pipe, aluminum windows, a flat roof. What's different about an older Valley house and how we work on it.
Ready to get it fixed?
Tell us what needs doing. Quotes are free. We usually reply within minutes, and always within 24 hours.