Builders and contractors LOVE texture for walls and ceilings as it allows them do to a crappy job on finishing seams, etc. Texture hides a lot of imperfections.
It can also hide a lot of damage. Our house had texture in the bathroom, walls and ceiling. Was not a fan, but it wasn't a priority, I was able to look past it while we focused on other things we wanted to change. 5 years later we started seeing mold seeping up through the texture in the corners. They didn't have the vent in the bathroom going outside, it was just recirculating the same moist air and the previous owners used the texture to cover it up. We wound up gutting the bathroom to the joists, hanging new drywall and fixing the ventilation so it vented outside. Now I'm weary of any textured walls/ceilings and always want to know what's under it.
It can really help with acoustics in your home. We scraped ours before we moved in (because it is such a mess, it is the best way to go), and while I love not having it, our house is also fairly loud with vaulted ceilings and a mix of wood floor and carpeting.
Post by SusanBAnthony on Feb 22, 2023 8:29:20 GMT -5
We have them meh. Whatever. Our basement doesn't have them and let me tell you, I can explain the exact drywall pattern and where every screw or nail was placed. So I can appreciate why popcorn ceilings exist!
I feel like they are one of those things that unless you get really stuck on them either for personal reasons or because you follow decorating trends, you really don't even notice or think about. Our first house had mirrored closet doors and I thought they were awful. So did many visitors to our house lol. But after a while we got used to them and plus also they are super practical because we had a built in floor length mirror and they made the space feel bigger and lighter. So we kept them until we sold the house.
We took ours down in our previous house because they had glitter (wtf) and looked awful since you could tell where someone had tried to touch up the ceiling with paint from previous water damage. Since the material was like dried spitballs, the paint didn't take very well. They were relatively easy to scrape off, and didn't make too much of a mess.
Totally an unpopular opinion... But my room growing up had glitter or rhinestones or something in them. And I loved them. And I weirdly still do. A few houses we looked at had them, and DH was adamant that we'd get them removed... thankfully we didn't buy one of those houses, so we didn't have to fight that battle.
But yes, if you do end up with a home with popcorn ceilings and needing to paint.. cutting in the corners is basically impossible.
We had a family friend with the glitter popcorn ceiling in her living room. I often slept over there on the living room couch and 5 year old me LOVED those ceilings!
That family no longer lives there, and several years ago I was going over contact info with a family entering my class. They live in that house our friends lived in! I asked about the popcorn glitter ceiling and sadly, no, it does not exist anymore.
We had them in our last house, only upstairs though. When we first moved in, we planned on removing them because they didn’t go with the character of our nearly 100 year old house. But as time passed, we kind of forgot about them, and we never bothered having that done. The drawbacks were that they were hard to clean, hard to paint a straight edge on the wall, and hard to paint themselves. But they didn’t need cleaning very often, we got the hang of painting an edge (just go slowly and carefully and use a narrow brush), and the couple times the actual ceilings needed painting, we hired that out.
Oh one other thing, when our roof leaked and we had to have repairs in two bedrooms, it was hard to find a contractor we were confident couple match the texture. Some of them were like “maaaaybe” and some tried to upsell us into getting rid of it altogether. We did find someone, and they did a great job, but we had to meet with a lot more companies than we would otherwise.
I had popcorn ceilings and when we did a reno in 2010, instead of scraping, the contractor put very thin drywall over the ceiling - maybe 1/8 inch?? The thinnest drywall possible. It looks great and very economical.
This is what we did when we bought a house with popcorn ceilings in 2021. It cost about $3k to do ~1600 sq ft worth in HCOL.
Our first house had mirrored closet doors and I thought they were awful. So did many visitors to our house lol. But after a while we got used to them and plus also they are super practical because we had a built in floor length mirror and they made the space feel bigger and lighter. So we kept them until we sold the house.
We actually added mirrored closet doors to 3 of the bedrooms (both kids + office). I didn't realize we were so off trend. We also removed them from one hallway closet, since I was annoyed everytime I walked up the stairs I could see every single thing DD had shoved under her bed. ETA: To be fair, our closet doors are HUGE. Our choices were somewhat limited.
Between this and my fondness for sparkly popcorn ceilings, clearly my home fashion tastes belong in another decade.
Our first house had mirrored closet doors and I thought they were awful. So did many visitors to our house lol. But after a while we got used to them and plus also they are super practical because we had a built in floor length mirror and they made the space feel bigger and lighter. So we kept them until we sold the house.
We actually added mirrored closet doors to 3 of the bedrooms (both kids + office). I didn't realize we were so off trend. We also removed them from one hallway closet, since I was annoyed everytime I walked up the stairs I could see every single thing DD had shoved under her bed. ETA: To be fair, our closet doors are HUGE. Our choices were somewhat limited.
Between this and my fondness for sparkly popcorn ceilings, clearly my home fashion tastes belong in another decade.
The sparkles do really set it off nicely, don't they?
We have ugly ceiling tiles that we need to replace but I honestly don’t think we could live here while they do it because we don’t have space to move the furniture and still be able move around the first floor. That’s what some contractors said anyway. We just keep putting it off and try not to look up. lol
Post by DotAndBuzz on Feb 22, 2023 12:34:18 GMT -5
Our house is a 90's McMansion, and was a decor tragedy when we moved in. Every obnoxious 90's aesthetic cliche was in this house. Except, thank God, popcorn ceilings. We've been slowly updating it, and I'm so thankful we don't have to navigate that. One of the bathrooms was some bizarre multi layer splatter paint that resulted in a heavily textured wall, so I was nervous that when I painted it it would look bad, but it looks fine, just like a slightly textured wall, and not true popcorn-ish. Part of the basement ceiling is finished in the same way (whyyyyy? Why would you splatter paint a ceiling?!), but I'm glad that when we get around to repainting that, it won't look too bad, or need to be resurfaced.
A true popcorn ceiling is a personal nightmare of mine.
Builders and contractors LOVE texture for walls and ceilings as it allows them do to a crappy job on finishing seams, etc. Texture hides a lot of imperfections.
This.
OP, my guess is that your house used to have popcorn ceilings. It's easy to remove but what is a pain is fixing the shitty work the popcorn was hiding. A friend of mine did it and it took professionals several days. Another alternative is knockdown texture. It hides imperfections and you can re-paint it if there are stains. Also, make sure the paint used for the ceiling is ceiling paint. Some people will cut corners and use regular white paint if they have it. Ceiling paint is flat so light doesn't highlight imperfections. Doesn't need to be fancy paint. I've painted all the ceilings of my old house with Behr ceiling paint and it was great. Never had an issue.
I would love to see this glitter popcorn ceiling a few of you speak of. I've never seen it!
Like this:
I've never seen or heard of this BUT I used to put those glow in the dark star stickers on my room ceiling. Which was probably popcorn. And then someone thought to combine the products, a Shark Tank concept before its time!