stipple ceilings

Like most of the population, I despise textured ceilings.  Of all the dirty ways builders find to save money I think this is the one that grinds my gears the most.  The savings was minimal but the remediation is painful.  Besides being unsightly, these ceilings collect dirt, dust, grease, and darken rooms by casting thousands of tiny shadows.

The downstairs remedy was easy.  Remove the ceilings and redo.  That decision was easy because most of the ceiling needed exposure given the all the recessed lights, plumbing, HVAC, and framing work that needed done.  The upstairs is a different story because (1) there is minimal infrastructure in the ceilings and (2) all that insulation is resting on the ceilings.  Leaving them is not an option ....

Option 1:  Drywall over the existing ceilings.  I don't like that option because you lose headroom and it cost about the same as paying someone to scrape, skim coast, and sand the ceilings.

Option 2:  Pay a company $2 a square foot to remedy.  eh ...  $2800 not really in the budget

Option 3: Trying sanding the ceilings myself.

Rent a pole sander from HD.  Comes with a hose so you can sync it up with wet/dry vac. Sweet

 The enemy.

So gross ....

The sander worked pretty well ...until I broke the sander.  It kept the dust down since I hooked the hose up to the dryvac.  The problem is that I tried to go too fast.  The tool is made in China and it has plastic pieces.  Duh

Attempt 2:  Orbital Sander ... Besides being way too slow because it's ... smaller,  there is no way to control the dust.  I think I almost choked myself.  The picture below was taken 20 minutes after I was done sanding.  The camera flash exposed all of the dust!

Attempt 3:  Wet and then scrape off the stipple.  I did a whole room in three dirty hours (see below)

However, as the scraping only removes most of the stipple.  I still need to sand the ceilings and probably skim coat because with all the scraping I damaged some of the drywall paper.

Attempt 1 seems to be the best way.  Time to go back to HD and rent a pole sander under a different name.