How much does it cost to remove popcorn texture?

Our removal projects are usually around $10 per square foot, its important for potential clients to understand the process to better understand the costs involved.

The removal of popcorn, is the most labor intensive part of the residential painting industry. There are no bulk discounts. If we are bidding on removing popcorn from the living room ceiling, we do not discount the removal of popcorn from the dining room. Your not dividing the work load, your multiplying the work load with more rooms.

We are essentially refinishing the surface. It is very labor intensive and if not done properly can be an unmitigated disaster. The cost to remove popcorn from an entire floor of your home can be over $10K.

It is often advisable to remove the texture from 1-2 rooms at a time, as the cost to do it all at once can be prohibitive. Sticker shock is a thing when clients want to rid the entire first or second floor of popcorn.

The Dusty Truth about Popcorn Removal

Scraping off popcorn ceilings, in our experience can go one of two ways. Easy off, or doesn’t come off. Usually the latter. Also in every case where we have scraped the ceilings, it needed to be skim coated. Some times more than once.

The issue here is 75% of the time, the ceiling isn’t even primed under the popcorn – its just bare drywall, which means the ceilings haven’t been finished! So in order to get them ready to be painted instead of being textured, the ceilings need to be finished.

But because ceilings often incur minor damage in the course of the texture removal, its easier, faster and cheaper to just skim the entire ceiling – with the added benefit of making the ceilings smoother instead of 50 patches everywhere.

Also it is not uncommon to have to address issues that were masked by the texture or other more significant damage that wasn’t apparent before. Its not really a problem, just adds more cost to the job. It takes an experienced eye to spot damage hidden by popcorn.

During all of this, is the most dust and dirt that you have ever seen, or will see in your house at any one point. Which we are constantly cleaning up, going through a lot of materials in the form of floor protection, wall protection, and dust containment. All the while your family must still live in the home.

Once the popcorn is off, the ceiling must be dry enough to prime it which will seal the surface of the drywall (can be bad if the ceiling isn’t adequately dry prior to priming).

How BIG is the ceiling?

-We do not give a discount on more ceilings to remove.

Drywall or plaster?
Because plaster is so much harder than drywall, removing popcorn from a plaster ceiling, is usually easier than removing popcorn from a drywall ceiling.

Can we keep the space ‘set up’ over night / through out the job?
Popcorn removal requires the extensive set up and clean up, which can take 60-90 minutes per day to set up & clean up. If we are removing it every night and setting everything back up the next day, that will affect the cost of the job.

We do not re-use plastic. We have used entire boxes of plastic on popcorn jobs. A box of plastic is 2,200 feet long

Popcorn removal is EXTREMELY messy and dirty. We remove it wet. It sticks to everything, especially our feet! We track it everywhere. After the job is complete, ladders, scaffolding, planks ect. often require cleaning prior to the start of the next job.