30 Year Old Popcorn

boardslinger

I recently did a job installing some ceiling fans. But ran into a bit of a snag when it came time to match the existing ceioing texture. I scraped an area of the popcorn of to install some support and a box and rehung the rock and wired the fans. The condo is 30 yrs old and there is not much room between the roof and the lid in the upstair. After hanging the fans it was time to blend in the aoustic ceiling, I blew it i with a low setting on my compressor, but the older started peeling, as I was sure it would. I then tried using popcorn in a can and held it at a good distance from the ceiling so there wouldn't be a high rate of pressure htting the existing popcorn. This too was unsuccessful. I even tried dabbing it on with a paint brush. But Normally telling the customer that the best thing to do would be to scrape the entire ceiling and re texturing would not be a problem, but she is on a fixed income and I really don't want to have to do this because of the prep work would be to great with all the crap she has in the condo. It would take me twice as long to mask everything off. Although I did tell her that if I did have to retexture I would give her a screaming deal. I also thought that maybe I could cut the popcorn out in a circle over the ceiling fans at the length of the blades and finish for a flat ceiling. But am a little discouraged from doing this, for fear of just having a bigger area that will not stop falling and not taking the new popcorn. I am at a complete loss here. Any thoughts or ideas on who to fix this problem would be greatly appreciated. I've never had to fix a problem like this before, I've always been able to blend in new texture. But like I said there is very little room from the roof to the lid, so the excessive heat in the summer has just baked the existing texture. As long as you don't mess with it everything is o.k., but once you disturb it then you have a mess.

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Sheetrock26

Instead of scraping a circle maybe you could add a decorative circle layer of drywall.

Teetorbilt

Is the area too large for a ceiling rosette? They come in different sizes.

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Tom R

Yeah, - - you should be able to find a decorative medallion up to at least 12", if not 16", in diameter.

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Mike Finley

How big is this area? This might sound crazy to you but I'm betting gluing some individual pop corn chunks one at a time by hand up there to match it is going to take less time then any thing else.

boardslinger

There are 4 fans total. every area that I scraped is just large enough for me to place some studs between the trusses. And get a box in there. 2 fans @ 30" and 2 @ 54" 3 of the area are less than the blade width, but 1 is real bad. it kept pealing even after I stopped scraping.
I don't think a race track will work sheetrock26, because I would only have to scrape an area to tape and glaze, to hide the edge of the rock.
And I don't know whether she'd go for a the rosette or medallion. Even though she is legally blind and really could not see wether I sprayed texture on the ceiling or not, she knows what she wants, and is quite the pain in the butt about it.

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TimNJ

If she is a heavy smoker you can use the fake butter kind and it will have a perfect yellow match to the rest of the ceiling.

CGofMP

I took someone's advice once and painted 30 year old texture with latex paint. bad Idea. It came off the celing like it was peeling off an orange. Ended up spraying it al down with warm water and scraping it all off, oil-primering the dry sheetrock and then having a texture guy come in and reblow the entire celing.

But as to blending....

As I was reading the first part of this I was thinking exactly what Tetor said. Something of this nature would solve the mix-n-match look of redone texturing, and in fact it might add a bit of sophistication to the look.

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Teetorbilt

Brian, next time try one of these.

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Tom R

Now that's what I'm talkin' about, - - and by the way, - - if I cause the problem, - - it's a 'medallion', - - but if it's my worker that causes the problem, - - it's a 'goof-plate'!!

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Teetorbilt

Another way out would be some trim attaced to the ceiling (octagonal?) with flat on the inside and popcorn on the outside. You choose the size.

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You can't solve you're problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

Albert Einstein

Mike Finley

I like your idea of the real pop corn better, if for nothing else it would be funny as hell.

boardslinger

Thanks for the advice guys, I really appreciate it. I went and took a chance on cutting out the popcorn in a bigger area. Took a string line and tied it to the fan and took my knife and around in a big circular I went. Carefully scraped off popcorn at cut edge and glazed for a nice smooth finish. Came out beautifully. Andmore importantly she was happy and I got to get out of there.lol. Thanks again fellas

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