Smoothing walls/ceilings

Hi Amanda!
Another new owner at St. C's has just scraped the ceiling to their condo to get rid of that old popcorn texture. He said it took about 10-12 hours of actual scraping.... split over a number of sessions as it's tough to keep your arms over your head that long. He'd do about half a room at a time before needing a break. Also add some time to clean up the mess and move furniture out of the way for the next session.

Another unit that I sold has had the ceiling done by a past owner and it looks great. A third unit closes this week and will be worked on in January. I'll have info for you on the technique that has been found to most efficiently remove the texturing. After it's all scraped down, St. C's maintenance people can come in to fix any exposed rebar areas before you do any texturing and painting you might have in mind.

For a west end house... I know of one in the rainforest on Mahogany road that will be coming on the market this spring. My house will also probably be for sale this spring.

I also took some photos recently of a duplex that is in the MLS next to Good Hope School. They even have an ocean view. I think it's priced at $165K or thereabouts. If you'd like to see the photos of the interior, let me know and I'll email them your way.

Yes, I'd love to see pics of it! We wouldn't mind scraping it ourselves if we were living there already but we don't want to spend our vacation working on it! Your house sounds great but we're looking to spend less than 200k, so the duplex sounds good.

Thanks!
Amanda

If you have any contractor recommendations and prices to do scrapping or popcorn ceilings/walls on STT I would appreciate it. Thanks!

I'll send you info on the duplex. The beauty of that is that you can cover a large part of your mortgage by renting out the other half. Then you can rent out both halves when it's time to upgrade once again. Not bad.

For the person seeking someone to do handyman/scraping work on STT.... I'm on STX, but if you contact me via email at stcroixhomes@hotmail.com I'll give you some pointers on how to find someone to do the work while not costing you a fortune.

Alexandra - I'd be interested in seeing the duplex pictures.

Be very careful scraping old popcorn ceilings. They most likely contain asbestos.This is not a job to do to save money.Talk to someone who does this professionaly.Be smart with your health and the people around you.This nasty stuff flys with the wind.

I'm a general contractor planning to move to STT - I wish I could help you with your job but I'm not down there yet. I've got a couple of tips for you, though.

If the surface is intact (not peeling or crumbling away) it will be a lot easier and less messy to have a plasterer simply skim-coat the surfaces. You can help him out by taking down any of the really high spots with a few taps of a hammer and clearing away any loose pieces. An experienced plasterer will go over it with one coat (maybe two) and there will be no sanding. If your plasterer has to sand anything than he's an amateur.

I have done this for customers who wanted smooth walls and ceilings instead of textured and it's very quick, painless, and relatively inexpensive. Ceiling work is thankless work - even I leave it to the pros.

Hope this helps!

Yeah, trust me! That's what we're looking for! We really don't want to do it ourselves, we'd rather find someone who does the smoothing and let them take care of it. If you know of anyone on STX, let me know!

Thanks!
Amanda

The popcorn ceiling texturing on many of the units at Amanda & Jamie's condo complex has been affected by humidity and other factors over time and has loose areas. Plastering over it really isn't a viable option. It's loose enough that it scrapes away from the concrete structure pretty easily. It's a relatively simple fix that has proven to increase the value of the condos that have had the repair done before going back on the market.