Do your own ceiling texture

Have you had water damage to a ceiling or remodeled your home and now need to do something with the bare SHEETROCK (R)? Have you priced the cost of a painter/contractor to finish the work for you? If so, you have probably been hit with a daunting total cost from his or her estimate.

Perhaps you are willing to do the painting but think you are unskilled in how to apply the texture you want to your ceiling. Believe it or not, the process is not that difficult or costly to do yourself. You will need a few basic things, though. They are an air compressor and hose, texture hopper, safety goggles and if you are under the height of 5’7” or you have ceilings taller than eight feet, and you will need some type of scaffolding. This scaffolding can be something as simple as a 2x10 or 2x12 laid across some chairs.

Many people will already have an air compressor for nail guns, and other pneumatic tools. For those that don’t have their own, a compressor can be rented for about $25 - $40 a day, depending on where you live. If you only have a few rooms to do, the project shouldn’t take over a day.

A texture hopper is a type of spray gun that has a container “hopper” at the top that feeds the texture material into the hand-held trigger sprayer below. On the face of the gun there are several selections for texture pattern and thickness. It works with an air compressor and you will have to play with the air pressure while working with the texture material yourself. The thinner the mud, the less pressure will be needed to spray it on.

Before you ever pick up the hopper and add the “mud” to it, make sure you have safety goggles on. The mud follows Newton’s law of gravity and will without doubt, begin to come down upon your head, face and body.

The mud that you put in the hopper is a watered down version of the drywall compound. In the Houston area, the average price for a 50-60 pound container is $6.95. When buying your compound, go with the type that is in the plastic buckets. The boxed type with the plastic bag inside can cause a world of irritation as the mud dries on the inside of the plastic bag and drops chunks of hard material into your supply. These chunks will leave trenches dug into your wall putty and stop up the flow of your hopper.

Getting the right consistency of the putty is a challenge in itself. Often when you look in books, ask the paint department employees at Home Depot, or anyone else you can think of as to the proper thickness or consistency of the texture material needed for use in the hopper, you will usually get the same response “as thick as you want it.”

Never having done this before, how are you to know how thick it should be? An excellent starting point is to have it start out with a cornbread batter consistency and thicken or thin as needed. If you haven’t ever made cornbread, go down to your local grocery and buy one of those forty-cent bags and follow the directions. This will give you a perfect example.

For those that don’t wish to try the hopper method, there is a “popcorn” additive that goes into paint primer. Some people may prefer this method but others may find it doesn’t roll on with the ease that the manufacturer promises nor does it stick consistently. Another problem can be with the clean up of the rollers. If you are using the cheap, throw away rollers it may not bother you but it is almost impossible to get the textured paint out of the expensive lamb’s wool roller covers.

If you only have a small area to texture, rent a hopper for about $20 a day. If you have plans for extensive remodeling or you have relatives that my go in with you on the price, the hopper sprayers in the Houston area run $55 - $65. It beats renting from a company or borrowing from a friend or relative. Especially if you have the type of luck that if something is going to break, it will happen while you are using it. Another plus in owning your own is you can do the work at anytime and if it suddenly becomes very humid or rainy, you haven’t already put out the rental money. Taping, floating and texture should be done during weather that is preferably over seventy degrees and low humidity. If nothing else, when you are done with your hopper, you can always throw it into a garage sale and get some of your purchase price back.

For those who have never attempted remodeling, texturing, painting or anything else because you “don’t know how to do it,” there are educational options. Most lumber stores have how to clinics in the evenings and on weekends and there simply isn’t a project out there that there isn’t a book or video to be found that will also tell you how to do it. With a little initiative and effort, the chances are good that you can not only do the project, but you will also enjoy it and the sense of accomplishment you will have afterwards, not to mention the money saved.