So you want to do a Textured Ceiling!

You have owned your home for quite a few years and have done some DIY around the ol’ homestead. You one day look at your ceilings and discover that they are perfectly fine except for the water marks left from when your kid played sailor Sam in the tub last month. You decide after discussing it with the “little Mrs.” that it is time for a textured look for the living room. Checking with various contractors, you find that the price to have it done is a bit out of the ballpark for you, and you decide to do-it-yourself.

So, off you go to the local large department store type chain hardware store with your ideas and questions. You learn it can be done by the DIY’er simply and easily and for a fraction of the cost of the contractor’s price. And then there is the satisfaction of doing the job yourself and living to tell about it! The sales person stops you in mid sentence with “are you spraying it on?” You look at him like he just stomped on your cat and say…”what?” With that he looks at you strangely and guides you to the line of sprayers they have made just for — you guessed, it spraying on a textured ceiling! Until just this moment you thought they were all done by hand!

He politely explains about the different types of texture hopper sprayers. He simplest has a container (the hopper) mounted on top of the spray gun that you load the texture mix into and then spray it on the ceiling.

You mix the material into a thick texture, usually like a biscuit batter, load it in the hopper and spray away.

There are some safety precautions and things that will keep your job easier too, like a short scaffolding to reduce the distance between you and the ceiling, goggles to keep the spray out of your eyes and a mask to keep it out of your lungs. You also should work in a well-ventilated area. You aren’t sure if you want to do more than the one room in the house, so the sales person advises you to rent the equipment rather than buy it and only use it once. Not very cost effective. Or you could buy it and let your neighbor borrow it. Then you might get it back should you need it again.

So, you get everything together, the texturizing material, plastic for the floor, scaffolding and your protective safety equipment and a video to watch while you wait for the weather to be the optimal above 70 and low humidity. In the meantime, you prep the ceiling making sure there is no dirt or loose paint that needs to be removed before you texture it. It just wouldn’t be right for a loose chunk to fall in your coffee when the textured weight hits a weak area and it eventually comes down and once again, proves that gravity does work.

Finally the weather is right, and you send the wife and son off for the day to the zoo so you can work un interrupted. You head for the hardware rental center in the big store and rent your equipment, get a last minute coaching from the sales person, and, off you go to spray up a ceiling.

After a final check for loose paint and covering the floor with sheet plastic you assemble the scaffolding, then mix the texture material to it’s dough consistency, load the hopper, put on your goggles and mask and you’re good to go!