I Hate Popcorn!!

Actually, I like the eating kind of popcorn. But that stuff used to texture ceilings in the 60's, 70's and 80's has risen to the top of the list of things I hate!

We volunteered to paint the inside of the Assistant Superintendent's house here at Enchanted Rock State Natural Area. The position is currently vacant, but is expected to be filled by mid-December. They want to get the house freshened up before their new hire moves in, and since Teri and I have become such experienced painters we volunteered. We kind of need to stop doing that, I think!!

Things were going very smoothly until I started to roll paint onto one of the bedroom ceilings. The popcorn texture immediately started pulling off of the ceiling, and the harder I tried to avoid it the worse it got. We got the park staff over to the house and all decided that the popcorn texture needed to be removed. So, I've now scraped popcorn texture from the ceilings of three bedrooms and two bathrooms.

Scraping Popcorn Texture from Ceiling

The popcorn flaked right off of about 50% of the ceiling area, but was stuck like glue to the other 50%. We decided to re-texture the ceiling with a much finer sand texture, which meant that the ceiling had to be very smooth before new texture could be applied.  So lots of scraping, wetting, more scaping, joint compound and sanding later, I was ready to apply the new texture.

New Ceiling Texture (Sand)

The new sand texture was mixed with Kilz Primer and a little bit of joint compound. The result was a thick textured paint that was rolled onto the ceiling. Two coats later we were ready to actually paint the ceiling (again) with the finish coats.

Rolling on the New Texture

We'll have the entire house finished in another week or so. We'll have a follow-up blog showing more of the fun!!

Mark