Test before you scrape
Acoustic ceiling texture applied before the early 1980s can contain asbestos. It is harmless while it is sitting on the ceiling and it is a genuine problem once you start scraping it into the air.
If your home is from that era, the texture gets sampled and tested before anyone touches it. If it comes back positive, the job is not ours, it is an abatement contractor's, and we will tell you that instead of scraping it anyway. If it comes back clean we get to work.
Containment first
This is a messy job done well only by containing it. Floors get covered and taped, walls get plastic, doorways and vents get sealed, and light fixtures come down rather than getting worked around.
The texture is misted with water and scraped wet, which keeps most of the material falling onto the plastic rather than floating through the house. When the plastic comes up at the end, the mess leaves with it.
Scraping is only half of it
Under the texture you find the original taping, and it was never meant to be seen. Seams, fastener heads, and trowel marks all show once the texture is gone, which is why a scrape alone leaves a ceiling that looks worse than what you started with.
The ceiling gets skimmed, sanded, and checked under a raking light before any paint goes on. Flat is the whole point, and a ceiling shows every flaw the moment sunlight comes across it.
Prime and paint
Bare skim coat and old texture soak up paint at different rates, so the ceiling gets a full prime coat before finish. Water stains get spot sealed first or they will bleed through no matter how many coats go over them.
Then two coats of a flat ceiling white. Flat is not a cost decision, it is the only sheen that does not telegraph every ripple. Walls and trim usually want repainting after a ceiling job, and that is worth folding in, see interior painting.
What the job includes
Room by room or whole house, in Moorestown and across South Jersey.
- ✓Asbestos sampling and testing on pre-1980 texture
- ✓Full containment of floors, walls, doorways, and vents
- ✓Wet scraping to keep dust down
- ✓Skim coating and sanding to a flat, inspected finish
- ✓Water stain sealing and full primer coat
- ✓Two coats of flat ceiling paint and complete cleanup
Common questions
Do I need to move out?
No. We work room by room and seal each one off, so the rest of the house stays usable. You will want the furniture out of the working room or centered and covered, and it is a loud, dusty day in that space, so plan around it if you work from home.
How long does a room take?
A typical bedroom is two to three days from start to painted, because the skim coat has to dry between passes. A large open living and dining area runs longer. Scraping itself is the fast part, the flat finish is what takes the time.
Can you just paint over the popcorn instead?
You can, and sometimes that is the right call for a rental or a tight budget. It looks better than a stained ceiling and it costs a fraction of removal. It will still be a textured ceiling, and painting it makes future removal harder because paint seals the texture and it no longer scrapes wet.
What if there is a water stain up there?
Fix the leak first. Once it is dry, the stain gets sealed with a stain blocking primer before anything else. If the board is soft or the tape has let go, that section gets cut out and replaced, which we handle as part of the job. See our drywall repair page for how that works.
Related services
These pair naturally with the work above.