Adventures In Ceiling Texture

So, it's been a few weeks since I have updated everyone on the bathroom reno.  It seems to be an every day part of our lives, so I try not to think about it when I don't have to.

A few weeks ago, while putting up the cement board, Andrew had to take off part of the lovely popcorn ceiling texture.  This started the thought process of " you already took down part of it, we might as well take off the rest".  If you haven't experienced the joy of removing popcorn texture, I invite you to come on over, and try your hand at it.  I learned why people say it is a total mess.  First there is the spraying with water.  Then, you have water running down everywhere.  I started scraping and just when I thought I had a good run going, I would hit a patch that didn't want to come off.  By the end, I was glad I was only doing this to a small bathroom.  I also ended up with a total mess on the floor.  I was glad Andrew insisted I wore the respirator while doing this project.

While the project didn't take that long, holding my arms above my head to scrape down all that ceiling texture seriously hurt.

All Done! 

Last night was the fun part, re-texturing.  We wanted to do knockdown ceiling texture.  We bought a hopper kit from Lowes as well as the texture mix.  Turns out, Andrew had to do this part because I wasn't tall enough.  I'm not even short, but I wasn't going to complain about getting out of this job.  Major lesson learned on this endeavor; less is more.  We didn't realize that the ceiling didn't need to have 100% coverage, and that is all I'm going to say about that.  

Andrew had the brilliant idea of using a sea sponge we had to "fix" our oops on the ceiling.  It worked amazingly well; major kudos to him for saving the day on this project.  While it wasn't the original knockdown texture we were going for, it looks good.  

 Plastic sheeting on the walls is a must have for this project.  We also covered the 

skylight opening as well as the fan opening.  This texture gets everywhere 

when it is sprayed.  We used a plastic drop cloth that come in sets of 5 

from Lowes for less than $5. 

 

 This is the texture after is was fixed.  I know, you really can't tell the difference.  

Let me tell you, it looks a million times better. 

We are in major push mode to get the bathroom primed and painted before the weekend, so we can put the first tile up this weekend.  So, tonight, I also primed the walls.  We need to take the light down on the wall since we are putting a new one up, so I primed around it.  I used a drywall primer rfrom Valspar because we did put up some new drywall and it needed to be primed.  I used it all over the room because we are going from a darker color to a lighter gray color.  I have learned throughout my various painting projects that primer is my friend.  I regret not using it in the kitchen because I think the color would have turned out more true to the pain sample I was going off of.  

Next, I will paint the ceiling.  It's white, so if it splatters down onto the primed walls, I'm not going to be too concerned about it.  We have a couple of spots to fix before I can paint the ceiling.  if we can get those take care of tomorrow afternoon, I can potentially paint the ceiling tomorrow night.  Thursday and Friday I can paint the walls and Saturday tile can go up!  It's progress people!