I am looking into having our ceilings smoothed out (or doing it myself). Some professionals have said it is a messy job but not much of a big deal: spray the ceiling with water & scrap off the stucco (or whatever it's called). Afterwards, do get a professional to finish it off. I have also been told by others, it is not worth going through the ordeal.
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Hi there. Unfortunately our camera doesn't seem to be working so I couldn't post photos of our steps to smooth out the ceiling. So sorry. I will get my husband to see if he can figure out what is wrong with it and try to post later this week. Maybe you already have scraped your ceiling smooth this past weekend?
Hi
Just thought I would let you know my experience. We moved into an older house with stipple on the ceiling that was yellowed and dated, so I too wanted to get rid of it. What I used was a putty knife thing, you know, the tool that you'd use to put plaster compound onto a wall with (flat on edge - it's late - the word isn't coming to me). I scraped it off dry. I didn't have any problems with any holes or anything with my roof. It came off quite nicely, but messy still. The problem that I encountered was that part of it had been painted over. The paint then made it more difficult to scrape off.
Good luck!!!
Hi again.
Getting the one major spot in our living room where the drywall sheets were loose was a bit of an ordeal but you may not encounter that. Smoothing out drywall compound for a big area like that takes work as you have to blend it out gradually back into the good area of your ceiling to make it look smooth and flat. I actually can't even see the spot where it was now so it did really come out nicely. It was just alot more sanding and refilling several times over to get it smooth.
Of the 2 bedrooms I have just scraped, one has that problem and one doesn't. I still have hallways and a kitchen to do yet too.
I scraped the 2 bedrooms without help from my husband so if your husband doesn't want to do the scraping, it is possible to accomplish it by yourself. I have patched the one room with compound myself too but I don't want to do all the sanding by myself. The extra arm strength for a pole sander is helpful.
Maybe try doing the inside of a closet first to see what you think before trying a whole room.
Maybe , I can attach some pics this weekend of the finished living room ceiling and then one of the one bedroom that is scraped with all those holes to be filled and the other bedroom with is already scraped and compounded but not sanded. It might help you decide.
Bye for now. I'd be interested to eventually hear what you decide!
Thank you so much for your reply. I was getting to think that people thought I was crazy as I've had mixed reactions from tradesmen.
I absolutely agree with you , no matter what you do to the rest of the room, if that ceiling is not smoothed out ,it will still look dated. Now I just have to convince my husband, maybe I'll have him read your generous e-mail.
Just one question, my concern is the drywall joints (on the ceiling of course), how difficult was it to get it to look SEEMLESS?
thanks again.
Hi......we have done this recently(just finished scraping a small bedroom last night in fact). Last year we did our livingroom and dining room ceiling and this past week I have been working on two small kid's bedrooms. Our families were really sceptical when we started this project but everyone thinks we did an amazing job. It makes the rooms look larger and the ceilings higher.
It is messy and time consuming and back and neck breaking work so you really have to want to do this. You may also find problems underneath the stipple that will need fixing. We found that the spots where the sheets of drywall were joined were uneven and loose when we pushed on our ceiling so we had to rescrew them and refill huge trenches.
If you still want to do this then here is our method but we didn't consult any professionals so maybe they would have a better method.
Cover floor with plastic.
With a plastic spray bottle filled with warm water, spray a good mist over the area where you are working. Let it sit for a couple of minutes then with a PLASTIC scraper scrape stipple off.
I then took a damp sponge and wiped the area where I worked to get off any remaining lumps and residue.
Even with a lot of care we could not help but scrape off spots of the drywall papers outer layer so when finished scraping you will have a ceiling with hundreds of little holes in the top layer of the ceilings drywall.
When all the ceiling has been scraped clean and sponge wiped, you will have to fill all those holes in the ceiling with drywall compound (make sure you get drywall compound and not another type of filler). Once those have been filled with compound and left to dry, then they have to be sanded smooth.(lots of dust!). You may find you have to fill again and resand spots.
After that then I lightly wiped the whole ceiling with a dry cloth to get any dust off it before priming with 2 coats of primer. Then finally you can paint with 2 coats of your desired paint colour.
All in all , we think it was worth it but we had to do ours since the previous owners had done different stipple patterns in adjoining rooms. YIKES!
Anyway, hope this helps and good luck!