Home Improvement Hints

Today's Lesson: Scraping Popcorn Texture Off Of Ceilings

For this, you'll need some ladders, medal scraper tools, and a water sprayer thingie (not like a little bottle, something bigger and more hardcore).

So you've just bought a house. Yay! Unfortunately, you and/or your freakishly-observant-of-ceilings spouse hates the popcorn texture that's on every ceiling in the house. Sounds like you'll be scraping that off! Luckily, if you follow these 3 easy steps, it will all be over in no time!

Step 1: Climb up your ladder and start scraping the plaster off the ceiling. Scrape until your arm starts to hurt and you realize that this really sucks, which will be about 3-5 minutes. In this time you have probably scraped about 1 square foot. Unfortunately you will have only scraped off about 1/2 off the amount of plaster you need to remove, because it needs to be down to the drywall only, and that's super hard.

Step 2: Spray a bunch of water all over the ceiling. Go walk around the house for 10 minutes or so, thinking about how maybe popcorn ceilings aren't so bad, and how to convince your crazy spouse of this fact. If you're not thinking that, then you are obviously the crazy spouse.

Step 3: Go back into the room you sprayed with water. Spray it a little more. Climb back up your ladder and start scraping again. Try not to leap for joy as the plaster now easily comes off in wet gooey splats, because you're pretty close to the ceiling and will probably hit your head.

Repeat this process over and over and over again (except you can skip step 1, that was just so you could fully appreciate how much easier it is to scrape the plaster off once its wet). You will love life for the first couple of rooms, maybe even go as fast as you can to show off how easy it is now that you know this new trick. You'll walk around the house on your plaster coated shoes, leaving white footprints all over your old navy blue carpet (assuming your old carpet is navy blue, and assuming you're getting rid of your existing carpet, which of course you are, because there's no way you'd do this on carpet you ever plan on living on). You'll vow to help eradicate popcorn ceilings everywhere, now that you're such an expert.

It will dawn on you soon that though this is easier, it's still not easy, and that you will most likely not be able to move your arms the next day. If you survive. Maybe if you're lucky some wonderful people will bring you a 2 liter bottle of Dr. Pepper and save your life moments before you expire of exhaustion.

To summarize, make sure you marry someone who is either extremely short and nearsighted, and/or not overly observant of or opinionated about ceiling textures. In other words, someone normal. That way you never have to bother doing this. But if given a choice between this and doing something like installing insulation, go for this. Trust me.