Subtitle: mudding, sanding and priming a ceiling.
I didn’t take any pictures of the mudding and sanding process, because a mudded and sanded ceiling looks just about the same as a ceiling recently scraped clean of popcorn, but it sure is a heck of a lot of work to achieve no visible difference!
DAY 1: Spackling/mudding all the little dings and dimples. Not a bad job at all – the joint compound is like peanut-butter-marshmallow-fluff that you smear onto the ceiling to smooth it out, but doesn’t taste quite as good. [Just kidding… It’s totally delicious] Some spots take two coats.
DAY 2: SANDING. Here is proof that actual work took place:
Headcovering, eye protection (didn’t have safety glasses, improvised with sun glasses), dust mask, drywall pole sander, a layer of white drywall dust covering every surface.
This is literally THE WORST DIY project I have ever taken upon myself and stuck with for the next three hours. If you are ever thinking of attempting this project, I cannot recommend it. In fact, I am honor bound to attempt to dissuade you.
—–> Can you possibly afford to hire someone else to do this? Do you have a spare kidney you could sell to obtain the necessary funds? Are you absolutely opposed to bank robbery/highway thievery? I promise, it’s worth every dime to NOT DO THIS YOURSELF.
Should you choose to ignore these dire warnings, you will likely come to regret it. You may find yourself cursing the day you were born a la Biblical Job.
[Don’t let that smile fool you. That is the crazed smile of an exhausted DIYer
with drywall dust on her eyelashes and despair in her heart.]
You may find yourself entirely rethinking your position on being a strong, independent woman. Or even an adult in general.
You start to wonder why you ever thought popcorn ceilings were so bad in the first place. You’d take a ceiling covered with ACTUAL BUTTERED POPCORN KERNELS over continuing this madness.
The dust gets everywhere, both in your house and on your person.
You consider just giving up. Could you possibly pass off the unfinished ceilings as “industrial”? That could be totally cool, right? Bryan says it would, but we don’t necessarily trust his taste in this matter. I think he has ulterior motives.
This song comes up on Pandora, and becomes your mantra for the whole day. You find yourself wishing you could just “fly the whole mess into the sea”.
But finally you finish. Not the whole house, mind you. There’s plenty more to do. But you’re done with the open kitchen-eating-living room area. Thank the Lord.
DAY 3: Priming. Time to pull out the big guns. The paint guy at Home Depot said to buy this kind:
Drywall can’t get enough of this primer. It’s drywall’s favorite new drink… sucks it up like a slurpy. Three more back breaking hours later (thank you Bryan a million times for helping me roll the ceiling!), and you end up with this:
A patchy, half-dry, but fully primed ceiling. And standing there, basking in it’s heavenly glow [it’s like, blindingly bright now compared to its dismal beginnings], you forget all the aches and pains and sniffles and the fact that you probably have the black lung now from all the drywall dust that’s still floating around…
And it’s not quite worth it, in the sense that you would never ever choose to bring this upon yourself again in the future, but it is empowering, in the sense that you might just have the strength and motivation to finish the rest of it.
One thing’s for sure… You will never take your ceilings for granted. You will probably drag perplexed house guests (and UPS/FedEx delivery drivers) throughout the house and make them admire your buttery smooth ceilings. You will always have the memories, and possibly the chiropractic bills. And that’s what DIY is all about, right?
Leave a Reply