The bookshelves are done, now we progress to the next stage in the living room and hallway… ceilings and walls. I’ve already started doing patchwork — proper patchwork, not the stupid crap that folks pass off as patchwork, like, say, two layers of masking tape over a hole in the wall that was then painted over.
Fuckers.
The old molding is already gone from around the doors and baseboards. I’ve tested a spot on the ceiling that needed some TLC to ensure that we can simply wet the old popcorn texture down and scrape it right off (this worked surprisingly well!). Tomorrow we start laying down sheeting on the floors and taping it along the walls at the ceiling line, so that we can start scraping the texture off in earnest. Then we can re-texture the ceiling with something more pleasant and subtle (a knockdown texture, also known as a “California Ceiling”… it’s pretty much what’s on the walls already).
Then we paint. Ceilings and walls, two coats each. Anything will be better than the “beige available in 55 gallon drums” that’s on the walls now.
I have texture ALL over my walls. I hate it. The contractor says the only way to get rid of it is to rip out the sheetrock. Seeing as the contractor is my dad… well..
The texture I have on my walls (and soon to be ceiling) is what is known as a “knockdown” texture. Basically, they spray on a spatter-like pattern of thinned drywall mud, wait about 20 minutes for it to set up a little, then take a wide drywall tool and lightly drag it across, flattening the spatter down almost, but not quite, all the way. It looks like a topographical map. To get perfectly smooth surfaces on my ceiling or walls is beyond my skill, and if there is so much as a roach-turd sized imperfection, it’ll stand out like someone put a neon ring around it. That’s why even a subtle texture is worth the effort.
The raised pebble-y texture… that does suck. That’s basically what the “popcorn” ceiling looks like, it’s very “welcome to 1970”, and it flecks off if you look at it crosseyed. It blows, and that’s why it’s going away. Fortunately, most popcorn ceilings are never painted (they go on white), or they get one coat of flat white paint, and you can wet it and scrape it off. Walls likely have more coats of paint than the wet/scrape trick will work on easily
If you have a low-profile texture (like the knockdown) on your walls, you can always skim-coat them with a few layers of drywall mud and sand it smooth, then re-paint. Can’t see that you’d need to rip it out. Even if you have a raised texture, you can likely sand it down a bit with drywall sanders, then skim with drywall mud. Means a bit more elbow grease, but a lot cheaper than all new drywall.
It doesn’t bother me THAT much.