I mentioned previously that we moved into a new house about a year and a half ago. It took us a long time to find something that we could both agree on. I was definitly seeking more of a fixer upper much to my husband’s dismay. So in the end I tricked my husband into thinking we were getting the move in ready house he had been searching for by not disclosing my endless list of “unnecessary” projects that I would be doing. This is a risky move, but he knows me too well to know I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off. First up on the list- those popcorn ceilings. This was the first thing I did after closing on the house before we had moved anything in. I highly recommend this by the way, if you can swing it. I really wanted to have my son’s room as close to completion as I could before he lived there. Moving is traumatic enough on a two year old and I wanted it to feel as smooth as possible for him. I’m not sure it worked, by the way. We still had months of not sleeping and pants wetting. Nonetheless, my intentions were really really good. There are lots of methods on scraping popcorn out there. I tried several of the rig it yourself solutions to make the bear of a task easier. I even went out and bought a new shop vac so that I could duct tape my scraper to the end of it so that all the dust would be magically sucked up leaving a beautifully clean floor. It didn’t work. In the end I recommend a step ladder, a mask and a six inch putty knife. I tried glasses and goggles and found that they just fogged up because of my mask. I decided it was more important to not breathe the durst than to get it into my eyes but to each their own. Just don’t stand directly under your putty knife. Work in front of you. I made a rooky mistake by trying the water bottle spray method right inside my bedroom door for all to see. I do not recmmend trialling anything in the middle of any room. Find a nice closet or somewhere less conspicious to experiment. I didn’t like the water effect. Yes, the popcorn came off much easier this way but I knew I was going to end up with knife marks all over the ceiling and I could just tell I wasn’t going to be happy with it. You can see what I mean in the photo below. A little texture does wonders for hiding ceiling imperfections. I have two words for the 90’s- knock down. So to save myself hours of patching dents in the ceiling I skipped the water and went for the knock down look. Just take that knife at a 45 degree angle and go for it baby. Your biceps will thank you later. It goes suprisingly quickly. Which is good because any longer and your body will go on strike. After painting my son’s ceiling, I decided that I would have been much happier if I had taken a few minutes to roughly sand down the ceiling after scraping. The purpose here is not to make it completly smooth but just to knock down some of the little hangy downy guys that are left after even the best scrape job. I really like to take shortcuts on a lot of projects I do, but do yourself a favor and take a sanding block real quick around. And I mean real quick. Just gently touch the surface of the ceiling with the block. You’ll thank me later when you aren’t laying on the floor looking up at the imperfections cursing yourself for skipping this step. Trust me this does not bring joy. You’re a mess already just do it. A word on painting ceilings- if you intend to paint the walls in addition to the ceiling, please paint the ceiling first. This way you can squeeze your roller all the way into the corner where the wall and ceiling meet and it won’t matter that you got your ceiling paint all over the wall. Do this so you don’t have to “cut in” which is just a fancy term for painting the edges. It is way easier to do the edge paining on the wall side than the ceiling side. I don’t ever tape. These are the steps it is okay to skip my friend. Just when your arms were starting to forgive you the painting starts and you will feel like you want to die. Here is the part where you’ll want your eye protection, skip the mask this time. Splatters of paint in your eyeball are no good. And again, if you can get away with not having furniture in the room do it, otherwise spread out some plastic and hope for the best because it will get messy. Last but not least, remember to roll your ceiling towards your windows. When that beautiful sunlight shines through you won’t want to see the paint roll lines. Stay tuned for Sawyer’s room revealed!