Ceiling Texture

[joelpat]

We have a 95 year old house, with plaster in fair to poor condition. We are going to gut it and put up sheetrock.

The overall feel of the house will be arts and crafts/craftsman style, adapted to a modern lifestyle (open floorplan). Ceilings are about 10 feet high and will have crown moldings. Walls will probably be bold (but not bright) colors.

So the question is - what ceiling texture should we go with? Bear in mind, this is a DIY project by handy people with more common sense than experience.

I'm starting to pay attention to ceiling texture more now, and I see some places have none, others go with a knockdown texture. What is being used in new construction these days? Any reason why I shouldn't follow that trend?

Thanks for the help.

[giddonah]

that sounds just like my house. Some spots were rocked previously, but it's 90% plaster. Where it was in good shape, we left it up. Where it had some water damage, we took it down. A bathroom was completely gutted though, even the 30yr old plaster repair that was in excellent shape. For ceiling texture I didn't do anything, but I have seen Behr stuff at HD that looked kind of cool. It was basically just thick paint done with a thick roller. I might try it somewhere. Most of the rooms are wallpapered. One room we're experimenting on where we just pulled the paper off and left the glue. We're just going to paint over the glue and let the texture show through. A test patch looked cool, we'll see in the next week or two. [/ramble]

[Zatol]

I build new homes and the trend now, in my area, is 9' ceilings with a smooth finish. I must admit that , in my opinion, the smooth finish looks better than the traditional popcorn finish. Beware though that the smooth finish requires a much better drywall finish than the popcorn.

In your house, beaded board ceiling may look nice.. I put them on the ceilings of my porches. We use 1/4" beaded board plywood, so it is really easy to do. It looks really nice, also.

[jrhode]

All the old houses I've worked in have had smooth ceilings, unless they've been re-done. If you want to stay true to the period of your house, smooth is the way to go. I think it looks better, too. Zatol is right, though - Smooth ceilings are tougher to get really "smooth." Then again, I've seen not-so-good tape & mud jobs telegraph through popcorn textures (and other textures, too) It depends on the look you're trying to achieve. If the walls & ceilings in the rest of the house aren't perfect, having that one perfectly smooth ceiling will stand out. Also, it depends what type/sheen of paint you want to use. Semi-gloss (typical of old houses) will really show any "character" in the surface, while a flat or matte paint will hide much of that "character." Colors will affect that too...

Popcorn texture is actually pretty easy to apply, although messy. Use lots of plastic and cover everything except the ceiling. You can rent texture sprayers just about anywhere.

I do a lot of high-end new homes, and I never see popcorn in them. It's either smooth or knockdown. If your fairly good with drywall taping/mudding, I'd go for smooth. It's probably easier than knockdown, but harder than popcorn texture.

giddonah - painting over wallpaper paste usually isn't a good idea. It can be a cool look but there's really not much holding the paint onto the wall. The paste tends to be brittle and easily scratched or rubbed off, and then it's hard to touch up and reproduce the texture. Just my 2 cents

[joelpat]

We are replacing everything, so it will all match throughout the house.

It sounds like I will go with smooth. I'll practice my drywall work in the attic, and then move downstairs.

Thanks for the help.

[giddonah]

giddonah - painting over wallpaper paste usually isn't a good idea. It can be a cool look but there's really not much holding the paint onto the wall. The paste tends to be brittle and easily scratched or rubbed off, and then it's hard to touch up and reproduce the texture. Just my 2 cents

That may be the usual, but this stuff doesn't come off with a belt sander. the only way we can get it off is to spray remover on it and scrape it off. It's on plaster, not drywall. Maybe that's the difference, I don't know.