Walls and Ceilings - Advice for Popcorn removal and Ceiling Retexture

:confused:
All,
I am in the process of removing my entire old “popcorn” textured ceiling. I am doing it myself after being quoted $1500-3000 for 1000 square feet of my town home. Additionally, I had the popcorn tested and thankfully it was asbestos free. After being convinced by me realtor of how easy this was I attempted my half bath. Here is what I did:
I laid a plastic drop cloth on the deck and taped plastic around the entire rest of the walls. I then wet the ceiling with a garden sprayer and let it sit for a couple of minutes. Next I used an 8” blade to start removing the ceiling. My first attempt got about 40% of the ceiling. I am assumed that the ceiling was painted so I scraped at the dry stuff some more and then got my sprayer to rewet the remaining. As I started to reapply water to the ceiling the plastic started falling off the walls around me, I guess the humidity was so high in there that the tape would not hold. I then went to Lowe’s and bought “Highly Adhesive Painters Tape” and reapplied NEW plastic. Just as I got about 90% of the popcorn off the plastic fell again. So I had the wife hold the plastic up in spots as I got the remaining off. Needless to say she was quite thrilled to look like a snow princess from the raining texture. Suddenly $3K seemed like a bargain. :o

Now all the popcorn is removed and I am looking at bare taped drywall. In addition, some of the paper and tape on the drywall torn and is patchy. I plan on starting the remaining 900 square feet when I get a plan of action I am comfortable with risking on the remainder of the house. I am electrician by trade and am not a total novice to such matters. I recently built a house for HFH (Habitat for Humanity) where I build the walls from the ground up, and thought I did a nice job.

The hurdle I see is how to retexture the ceiling to match the knock down texture on the walls. Do I have to rent a hopper or is there a more affordable way? I am a lowly enlisted man in the Navy and the cost of living in San Diego has dipped deep into my pockets. I saw some help on here for a manual method involving a “hawk” (What is a hawk?) and a few other tools. I have numerous tools at my disposal free of charge through the Navy and a hopper is not one of them, although I do have a 1 cubic foot 120psi compressor, which struggles filling more than 10 soccer balls. Any advice concerning any/all of these concerns would be greatly appreciated

Respectfully,
Bill

Why does the tape let go right when you need it to stay up?? :p You have all the steps down to remove the texture. Now you go 2 ways. First you can finish smooth or texture. Sounds like you want texture. Usually the drywall under popcorn is finished with just 2 coats. Thats ok but I would still put on another coat and touch up all gauges or scratches that were caused by texture removal. The only way to match knockdown is with a hopper. You can rent them. You can do a stomp knockdown. Which is done with a crows foot brush. Or a stipple knockdown with a stipple brush. these will leave you with a bigger flat area than sprayed. you really just have to find what you like best and go for it. A hawk is a 12 inch square flat piece of metal with a handle in the middle. It holds plaster or mud while you are troweling it on.

Great thanks, I kinda figured I had to get a hopper. Any ideas on how to protect the rest of my house, ie... carpet furniture. Also here is a link to two images. One image is the texture I need to match and the other is the ceiling in question.:

http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=3575685093&code=11968974&mode=invite&cmp=EMC-AlbumInvite

If you don't have a image station login heres one:
Login: frogforum
Password: frog

Do I need a specific hopper attachment to get this result?

here is a gun you can buy that doesn't need a real big compressor. Maybe you know someone with a compressor you can borrow. Usually no tax but shipping applies, but it's not to bad. If you decide to get it choose the right shippng method to get it in time

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No probs you live around the corner from them. Keep it or sell it when your done. This gives you the option of taking your time and getting it right.

Great!, but how do I match the above texture?

If I had to I could, but It would take a little trial and error. Here is a sight.near the bottom is some helpful info . Take a look. I wouldn't do anything until I had some good results on some practice surface.

http://www.coronadopaint.com/product/908specif.htm

At first I thought it would be a major issue having different textures on the ceiling and walls after I had popcorn removed. But even when people are looking at the improvements at my house, they don't notice the fact that the wall texture and ceiling textures are entirely different. If you get it close, you'll be fine. I'd guess a medium-ish spray for the texture you have right now.

2 Words---


New Sheetrock

That would have been much easier than scrapping the popcorn off the ceiling and given the price of rock these days(which is really just paper), it is a lot cheaper. If you don't feel confident with the spackling and taping, pay someone a few dollars to do it. But the beauty of this plan is that you can put the new rock right over the popcorn, like it was never even there.....works like a champ...

Let's hope there was no asbestos in that popcorn ceiling. Alot of popcorn installed before the 1980s contained asbestos.

No there is no asbestos, I had it tested.