We have removed our share of popcorn ceiling texture from ceilings all over western New York. We use water to remove the ceiling texture, as its the safest, most efficient way to remove a popcorn ceiling. We have tried the sanding method, and while that does work, and is sometimes faster, multiple visits to the chiropractor after the fact is usually required so we don’t do that anymore. Imagine holding up a 25 pound broom, against your ceiling and moving it across the ceiling, taking care not to dig into the drywall. Its not easy, and literally is back breaking work.
Our way, while messier, is easier. And typically results in less over all dust, as well as negating the asbestos risk. We take a 2 gallon sprayer, fill it with warm water, and spray your ceilings til they begin to drip, then move to the next area, and then come back and hit the areas we started with. At that point, we take a 6″ putty knife and scrape off the texture.
If the ceilings have never been painted, we have a special tool that works extremely well to remove texture. However often the ceiling have been painted due to their age, theyre dirty, so naturally we want white ceilings, so about 50% of the ceilings we remove are painted. The water method stil works, just takes a bit more finesse.
Popcorn Texture is Often Used to Hide Defects
Often times, popcorn texture was applied to ceilings to hide damage. Such as in this case there was a fair amount of ceiling damage and over all ‘weirdness’ going on that required patching in addition to skim coating the entire ceiling
Here is Stacy working her drywall magic. This area required extensive patching.
Always looks really bad right before it looks amazing.
Professional Problem Solvers
We run into this from time to time. We tried using a quality, high build latex primer from Sherwin in this area, and well as you can see it didn’t work. We promptly returned it to Sherwin. Another disappointment. So we switched back to our tried and true oil primer from Sherwin.
Ceiling Skim Coating
Once the ceiling were primed, we skim coated them. Then sanded, then primed with oil primer (because it works) and then made touchups to our work.
Once we were happy with how the ceilings looked, we painted them. Came out really nice. In these photos, the ceiling paint was still drying. For whatever reason, the ceilings took forever to dry in this house.
Ceiling Painters
We also did the kitchen, hall, and master bedroom ceilings.
You would never know we had an issue around the staircase.
Master bedroom ceiling.. Complete with glitter!
I figured the job would take about a week to complete. However due to the drying issues we ran into, the total project ended up taking 7 days.
If you would like to discuss removing popcorn ceilings in your home, give us a call: 716-697-3560
The Carrigan Archives was created as a way to document our work outside of social media. What began as a simple portfolio has grown into the largest collection of project photos and case studies focused on interior painting, ceiling repair, and drywall and plaster repair in Western New York. The Archive is actively maintained and reflects actual jobs—not staged examples or stock imagery.
Most projects are documented from start to finish by Dave Carrigan Jr. and his staff to give homeowners the context needed to evaluate professional workmanship before hiring a contractor. The focus is transparency: how problems are identified, how repairs are approached, and the level of care applied throughout the process.
Carrigan Painting was founded in 2010 in Amherst, NY by a third-generation plasterer and painter. Our company specializes in residential repaints and substrate repairs. The Archive is organized by service and by town, reflecting both the range of work performed and the areas served. It currently includes over 120 case studies and more than 2,000 project photos.
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Home Painting Services
At Carrigan Painting we focus on residential painting and related services. We prefer to be the best at what we do instead of a Jack of All Trades.
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