Ottawa's top Stipple Removal Company

What Goes Into the Cost of Removing Popcorn Ceiling?

First let's examine what we're talking about here. We're talking about laying our floor protection throughout the entire area. Doing this room by room would be extremely expensive. So all the furniture must be cleared out for ease of execution as well as to eliminate trip hazards. You have to remember that the crews are looking up all day, not down.

Then, using a dust extractor hooked up to a big orbital sander, the crews remove all the stipple or popcorn ceiling. Then they apply 3 to 4 coats of mud (skim coats) over top. There are different methods of doing this. So far, apart from the floor protection, we've gone over the ceilings 4 times. Every square inch of that ceiling has been touched 4 times, if not 5. Now it's time for sanding. Again, using a dust extractor and a sander. Once that is done. A heavy primer is applied to the entire ceiling. New mud, or drywall compound, is extremely porous and sucks up the primer like there is no tomorrow. It's like a dehydrated velociraptor. Then 2 coats of paint must be applied and the viscosity of a primer and ceiling paint is almost identical. You would think that 1 coat of paint over a thick primer would be fine but painting fresh drywall compound is not like painting newly hung drywall. It's hungry.

So now we've gone over every square inch of the ceiling, not including the floor protection, 8 or 9 times if we had to do a fourth coat. Why would we have had to do a fourth coat? Sometimes the ceiling is in very poor condition. Sometimes the edges need extra attention and blending. Other times there are many cracks in the ceiling that have been repaired and need blending. On other occasions you have wavy ceilings that weren't noticeable with the stipple but now flat, these ceilings would make you wish you'd never gotten rid of it. This takes a lot of mud and expertise to fix. Not only is this manual mudding and correction application very intricate work, but only a seasoned technician would know how the 8am light or 5pm glow will come through that window and affect the ceiling and know exactly where to start and where to end this correction. Because you have to remember that the regular 3 coats are just 3 thin skim coats, they aren't thick coats for covering the stucco ceiling (see what I did there?).

Now if a company were paying its employees next to nothing, the process would be cheaper, but in order to have quality staff that is eager to come to work and especially eager to remove stipple all day these technicians are well paid and despite all the material necessary for popcorn ceiling removal, the labour remains the most costly part of it all.

The Average Cost of Popcorn Ceiling Removal with Patchboyz vs Other Companies

We have done small popcorn removal projects for $1800 and we've done large popcorn ceiling removal for $19,000. But from our research we've been able to identify that our removal cost is usually 25% to 40% less expensive than buying the option straight from your home builder. The new home builders we've looked at are often up-selling popcorn ceiling removal for $25,000 for an average home. [Written in Jan 2021]

Of course we haven't talked asbestos. If your home is found to have asbestos, most companies won't touch it. Fortunately we're licensed for this kind of thing. We've developed a process that while, more expensive than regular stipple ceiling removal, is not cost prohibitive and leaves you with an equally nice finish, allowing you to open up the space and reflect the light throughout your home as you would with a regular non asbestos flat ceiling. Ask us about it!

If you'd like to know a little more about what it might cost to remove the popcorn ceiling in your home, reach out to us. We've be happy to give you a Free Estimate and recommend the phasing for your project if you're currently living in your home.