Popcorn and textured ceilings date a room faster than almost anything else in it, and they hold dust, cobwebs and allergens in a way a flat ceiling does not. We remove them, skim the ceiling smooth, and repaint — across Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point and the surrounding towns.
Test before you scrape, if the house is old enough
Ceiling texture applied before about 1980 can contain asbestos, and a great many Triad houses are that old. It is harmless while it is intact and overhead; it is not harmless once somebody puts a scraper through it. If your house dates from before 1980 and the ceiling has not been replaced since, get the texture tested by a lab before anyone disturbs it. A sample is inexpensive and the answer is definitive.
If it tests positive, that is licensed abatement work and we will tell you so rather than take the job. If it tests negative — which is the more common result — we can get on with it.
Containment is most of the work
Scraping a ceiling makes an enormous mess, and the difference between a good ceiling job and a bad one is mostly about where that mess ends up. Floors and furniture get covered, doorways and HVAC returns get sealed, walls get masked, and the debris comes out with us. Craig McCleary's description of our crews — that they removed all of his popcorn ceilings with minimum disruption to their lives — is the standard we are aiming at.
Smooth, not just scraped
Once the texture is off, the ceiling underneath is rarely ready to paint. Old joints show, screw heads telegraph, and there is usually damage the texture was hiding. We skim, sand and prime before the finish coats, because a bare scraped ceiling painted straight away simply swaps one ugly ceiling for a different one.
