Why remove popcorn ceilings? Plain good sense!

(23 days to possession… and dreaming of popcorn ceilings)

Why? Because I hate them – and have gathered compelling popcorn-destroying evidence. Little gremlins live up there, casting shadows over every half centimetre. Who ever thought,

“Hey, let’s invite half a billion shadows to rain down indoors, while it’s raining half the year outdoors?”

Why remove a popcorn ceiling?

1. To add value to our apartment, we’re meant to “create smooth finishes” and “increase brightness”. Deal!
2. The stuff makes me apoplectic. I’m glad the world of experts agrees – because if they thought I was sleeping one more night of my life under a popcorn ceiling: they were wrong.

When to remove popcorn ceilings?

Can we kill the popcorn first? I’m already losing sleep, game-planning my way through the first few days of ugly baby access. Which ugliness, specifically, won’t survive the first night? These decisions need making quickly: there’s only three weeks to go! After some keen Googling, it seems we renovate from top-to-bottom:

1. popcorn ceilings
2. walls
3. floors

It makes scientific sense. Removing a much-hated popcorn ceiling = ceiling obliteration = a holocaust of dust. Why not get the grottiest of grot vacuumed up before we move but one piece of soft furnishing into the premises? That’s what I’ll tell Paolo. Inwardly, it’s because the sight of popcorn ceilings turn me into a hateful she-demon. They are wretched.

Everyone hates popcorn ceilings, right?

Luckily, the annihilation of popcorn is one instance where what I want overlaps with what buyers want. I doubt this will often be the case.

Anyone with accounts of heroic gremlin defeat and popcorn ceiling removal? Speak now. You will receive medals. Nay, full knighthood.

{Update: The war is won! We’ve removed 100% of the popcorn ceiling – job done.

• we double-checked for asbestos in our popcorn ceilings;
• learned how to remove them ourselves;
• gained crazy skills in skim coating the ceiling to repair it.

Result? Every room in our apartment is happy and bright. Why remove your popcorn ceiling? Cold hard facts, my friend. See how bad it looked in our ugly bedroom?}

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Full photo credit (plus a few creative liberties) to lnti and largestartist via Flickr Creative Commons