I Rock!

Well sheet rock that is!  Anyone remember that huge hole in my ceiling?  I posted it HERE on the window treatment blog.  Well,  it's gone!  Long gone really since we tore down the ceiling and put up sheet rock in the middle of all the traveling, but this weekend I got it textured.  While it'st got some issues, I'm thinking it turned out rather well.

The ceiling we replaced is low, really low.  It's only 6.5 feet at the most optimistic, and for the first time since we've lived here it's flat!!!!  When we moved in it was one of the first things I wanted to fix.  It was all warped and horribly patched and just U G L Y!  Having the ceiling flat, even without the texture was just so nice.  Now it looks so much more complete!  I can hardly wait to get the paint on it and put my new bronze ceiling hugging lights up!  Did I tell you all that I wired a new light and switch for it too?  We did!  It was an adventure (did you know insulation can act like rubber with a drill bit?  Well it can!), but we overcame and I didn't even mess up the circuit!



So back to the texturing.  I have to share what I did in case any of you want to do it too, or so you can know why I can barely lift my arms while I've still got so much scraping, sanding and painting ahead of me.

So I put a thin layer of mud (joint compound) on the ceiling, standing on my step stool I made in kindergarten (that dad who led that craft was a genius!  Who else has something from kindergarten they still use that they MADE!)  Then with my mud on my tray I slather as much on the ceiling as I can, typically catching multiple dropped blots on my person, and the tarp.  Then when I have as much as I can work with on the ceiling I smooth it out with the trowel.  Get it all nice and purty!  Then take a paint roller and lightly (or not so lightly if you want more of a texture, like my husband wanted, but this is much messier and harder to do blending with!) rub over your nice smooth mud and make stars with the roller!  Move the step stool, grab more mud, and repeat!

If you let it dry it is a bit tricky to blend (as the new mud fills in the old stars, but there isn't enough mud to make stars again).  This is really only a problem if you push hard, although the pushing hard method works better as your roller gets covered in a layer of mud.  If you are doing the light stars, you can let the mud sit a little and start to get firm, you also want to keep your roller clean and a little water on it will actually keep the stars from getting too deep.

Since the ceiling is low we wanted a texture that would look alright with the crappy popcorn texture the rest of the house has (think texture stalactites hanging down or kernels), but still close enough to the ceiling that my 6+ foot friends wouldn't hit their head on it knocking texture off.  -- This totally happened a lot before!  I'd even knock stuff off while doing wii fit!  Hopefully that problem is eliminated.

We also decided on a color for the walls that my father has offered to texture with his texture gun..... Butter Up by Sherwin Williams, who coincidentally was having their big paint sale this weekend.... I bought lots of paint and supplies :)  Now I just have to finish up outside too!