Popcorn Carnage
Oh, how I hate popcorn. But we are in the “popcorn ceiling” income bracket. The houses we looked at… they’ve got a history. A very dark history involving a very ugly, lumpy ceiling texture. It’s gross: it falls down on its own, it traps cobwebs, and stains (of which this house has many…) are impossible to remove.
I tried my hand at popcorn removal a year ago, but that was more a practice in mess-making and cursing. Can you believe this disaster took me an hour to make?
Since the downstairs is already a construction zone, why not add on another project? I found a contractor online who would do the job for the kitchen, dining room, living room, and entry hall for about $1300. The end result was absolutely 100% worth it, but I didn’t really know what to expect going in so I’m gonna lay it all out here for other folks who might be interested in professional popcorn removal.
Also: you’re supposed to test your popcorn for asbestos! We put this off a long time because we thought it’d be difficult, but it’s not. You scrape some into a ziplock bag and drop it off at a nearby test facility. We had results in two days for $35. Results = NOT ASBESTOS! Also: it’s not the father.
$1300 bought me:
- half a house full of plastic (half the kitchen, entry hallway, dining room, living room: about 300 square feet total)
- light fixture removal (they do NOT put them back up though!)
- rapid-fire popcorn removal from ceilings
- fresh ceiling texturing (like what your walls probably have)
- two coats of white paint
- garbage haul away
Monday afternoon: Steve and his assistant (just two guys!) got down to business: in 20 minutes the entire work area was covered in plastic. Two hours later, the popcorn was history. I don’t know what sorcery they used to remove it, but that crap came down turbo speed. They then hauled away all the popcorn mush and left for the day.
Side note: the stilts they used were freaking awesome.
Monday night: We now live in the house from ET.
Tuesday afternoon: Steve returned to blast texture all over the ceiling. With some kind of paint gun. It was awesome. He was in and out in under 2 hours. Living amid all this plastic was starting to wear on us, but Wednesday was the final day of work.
Wednesday: Steve’s first visit on Wednesday was to blast on the first coat of paint, and then he left, promising to return around 3pm to shoot on a second coat of paint if the ceiling happened to be dry by then. If not, it would have to wait until Thursday, but that would conflict with our flooring so it that ceiling had to get DRY! Jim and I rushed home over our lunch break and the three of us (Jim, Dad, and myself) blasted the ceiling with hairdryers and fans. After the paint was power-dried, Steve returned in the afternoon, declared it dry enough, and completed the last coat.
Cleanup was fast, and with the project fully behind us it’s safe to say now that it was TOTALLY WORTH IT!! Look at these flat, shiny ceilings. You could ice skate on these babies.
Hallway:
Dining room:
Living room:
Wow, what an improvement!! Of course, the house remains a mess as flooring is already underway. Scheduling back to back contractors was risky, but everything’s worked out perfectly. The living room is so much more sleek, shiny, and bright!!
Countertop awesomeness
OMG I super love it!! I didn’t know I could feel this way about a counter top.
Before:
After: our new Samsung Staron beauty (quick, look now before we crap it up with all our appliances and junk):
PS: way to diversify your biz, Samsung. TVs, phones, and countertops? Why the hell not…
LOOK AT THIS HUGE SINK, OMG!!!
I thought the seam-baking step was particularly interesting.
The installers glued little blocks (smalll Staron samples perhaps?) to the countertop then put these strong clips on while the seam “baked”. Dad and I both were looking at these when one suddenly EXPLODED off and freaked us both out!! We didn’t go near it again after that.
The Big Day!
April 23rd – the official kickoff of our week-long contractor madness!
Hit List:
- Laminate counter tops
- Popcorn ceiling texture
I think laminate gets an unfairly bad reputation. Knowing that we were soon going to replace this countertop, we started going rough on it just to see what it could take. Tools, hot pans, sharp knives – this counter has survived it all! We couldn’t destroy the laminate even when we tried.
For like, 10 bucks a square foot or whatever it is, this stuff is kitchen gold. Sure, you won’t brag about it in your real estate listing, but it’s functional stuff!
The real villain here is the sink: its double bowl design means that our larger cookwear can’t fit into either bowl, making dish duty even more sucky than usual. It’s a weird coated surface sink, too, and the pale surface shows every bit of dirt. Furthermore, the over-mount design means the seam between it and the countertop collects loads of filth and mold. As far as First World middle-class problems go, this one is pretty crappy.
Also on its way out: our popcorn ceiling texture. Apparently this junk looked good in the 70s, but it’s just a horrid trap for cobwebs and water stains (which cannot be scrubbed off or painted). It’s disgusting, and it falls down on its own, bit by bit. Our contractor will be removing the popcorn, “re-mudding” the ceiling, and then painting it in the kitchen, dining room, and living room.
And so it begins…
More Paint!
The beige clashed with the mint green wherever they met, so we bid farewell to our beige hall and made it all mint green.
Original colors:
- family room (open to kitchen) = mint
- hallway = beige
- kitchen = dark green
Current colors:
- family room = mint
- hallway = mint
- kitchen = mint
The end result: seamless, wonderful pale green from the moment you step into the hallway. It even makes the kitchen feel bigger! One color = win.
Floutlet
Floor outlet = floutlet
Found this outlet near the slider door. The writing says “We don’t need this outlet”.
My super elite carbon dating skills have dated this floor to 1993, so this outlet has been boarded up and un-loved for nearly 20 years. Will it still work?
YES.
That’s it, I’m keeping it and setting up a charging station over it!
We struck MOLD!
I tore a path through the plywood and vinyl to the dining area, just to say I did. Now it looks like the Tazmanian Devil tore through the kitchen:
But what’s this?! Moisture under the plywood? And MOLD?? Uh oh…
I broke off the plywood, threw it out, and wiped up the moisture. I’ve heard scary things about black mold in WA state, but … well, it can’t be harmful if we get rid of it really fast, can it? 
I have no idea how it got in there – maybe a dishwasher leak?
Floor destruction!
We’ve got our floor contractor arranged! Time to RIP UP SOME FLOORS!
Getting the bathroom started was tricky. We pulled up a couple small pieces near the heating vent, and then just smashed one board with a crowbar until we got it out. From there, we had access to the rest of them. We pulled out as many as we could without removing the toilet or sink (that’s a project for this weekend).
I don’t know why there is newspaper (from 1993) under the sink. I don’t want to know why.
Same technique worked in the entry way: destroy one board, pull out its shattered remains, and use the gap to get at the adjacent ones. Removing each board is not easy work, but at least it is doable. We took turns leveraging the boards out one by one. Each one has several nails through it, and not a single one has come out without splintering.
Unfortunately, the hardwoods ain’t got nothing on the plywood and vinyl combo in the kitchen. This crap comes up in tiny bits, requires several swings of the crowbar, a lot of leveraging, and it makes a huge splintery mess. Here I am prying up the largest piece we’ve managed to pull out at once (which took a lot of two-crowbar teamwork).
A vinyl ramp to make up the difference in floor heights! Why? Why not just do it right? 
1990s vinyl, meet 1980s vinyl. Below that: 1970s vinyl.
Our warzone:
Sink inc!
Also part of today’s adventures: Jim and I went to a couple stores around town in search of a 30 x 17 stainless steel single bowl sink that could be under-mounted to our incoming solid surface counter top. Unfortunately, we had no luck finding what we were looking for so we ended up online. Even Home Depot’s sink aisle was full of signs boasting of its 4000+ sinks available through their website.
We found this Kraus-brand sink that was extremely well reviewed! We’ll need the sink on hand when the Home Depot contractor comes over to draw the counter top template.
Also faucet!
Hard Flooring: step 1
Well, I’ve threatened it for over a year now, and that time is finally here! The final reckoning for our house’s mosaic of downstairs flooring! We’ve already carpeted everywhere we intend to carpet, but the hard floors have remained untouched until now. We’ll be replacing old hardwoods in the entry and the bathroom, and cheap Allure/vinyl in the kitchen, and ancient carpet in the dining room. Restoring the hard woods was an option, but I would rather have one hard floor downstairs instead of several. The transition pieces are awkward to step over. I don’t know why the previous owner stopped the hardwoods where they did, because the steams are awkward and ugly. So alas, the hardwoods are out. Perhaps they can be removed without damaging them, and donated to a good cause?
This weekend was the first major step towards completing our flooring. The more we remove ourselves, the more we save, so out came the crowbars!
We:
- pulled up all of the Allure flooring in the kitchen and hall (it is now a giant scrap pile in the garage)
- removed all carpeting and padding from the dining room
- removed most of the woodwork trim from the kitchen, dining room, and hallway
- tried (and mostly failed) to remove the hardwood flooring from the bathroom
- removed all the brassy joiners that acted as seams for our patchwork flooring
- ordered our Corian countertop for our kitchen
- scheduled a measure with Haight Flooring for tomorrow
We are pooped! But things are moving again, and that’s awesome!! Here are some photos of our work:
Allure flooring gone! Fortunately, it was only glued to itself, not the vinyl underneath.
This vinyl has seen MUCH better days. I have no idea what f’d this floor up so bad. This damage is actually torn into the vinyl, and no, it wasn’t just pulled up by the Allure. Whatever happened, it must have been pretty awesome to watch.
In the bathroom we removed the wood trim (revealing more of my favorite wallpaper ever) and pulled out a few of the hardwood planks to reveal what has got to be the final word on hideous vinyl. And not just one layer, but TWO! TWO ugly vinyls right on top of each other!! It’s like an ugly vinyl sandwich. The wood boards are nailed in, which makes pulling them out pretty difficult. They break up when removed, which is a bummer. We didn’t get too far. We may have our new flooring installers take this one out. It’s pretty beastly.
Pulling up the metal threshold transition between our garage stairs and our hallway revealed another ugly vinyl sandwich with a different ugly pattern. I can’t imagine the eyesore that this house apparently was at some point in its 34 year life.
And finally, a large sample of our laminate flooring! Shaw brand “Brazillian Vue” isn’t quite as red as it looks in this photo, and should be stunning next to white trim and our pale green and beige walls. I like that it’s made in the US, too.
With this in place our former patchwork of 4 different floors will be transformed into one smooth and silky chocolately brown laminate covering. Hooray!
Kitchen contractor #1 fail
We had an appointment at 9am Thursday, March 15th with a contractor to evaluate the costs of our kitchen flooring, counter tops, and lighting update, but he was a no-show. It was disappointing, but there are loads of contractors looking for work so it wasn’t difficult to find a new contractor and schedule an estimate with him for two weeks from now! Not much else to report – we’re waiting on contractors at this point.
