My daughter has a rental house that she is trying to get in shape to put on the market to sell. The last tenant destroyed it. The whole house has pop corn ceiling and some of it is very dirty. Can it be painted or cleaned? She is doing the work herself so she needs a easy and quick way to do it. She scraped it off one of the bathroom ceiling, but she is not wanting to do all the rooms, too much work. Thanks for your response.

Hello grandma. Boy, I can certainly understand her reticence to scrape off that stuff. Talk about a lot of work! It will take forever if the tenant put it through the entire house. I hope she kept their security deposit. That is definitely considered damage to property. I hate that stuff.

Yes, although it is a lot of work, she can paint it. Cleaning it is a lot more difficult. If removing it is not an option, painting is the way to go. She should pick a bright white paint to minimize that low ceiling effect popcorning it brings to a room. She will need to use a roller on a telescopic extension handle. She can find that at any home improvement or paint store. It will still be a lot of work, but not as much as it would be to remove it all.

Tell your daughter good luck from me and that I feel her pain. :)

Thank you RubyPitbull, my daughter had to evict the tenant and lost a lot of rent. He was someone they went to school with and didn't think he would do this to them. She was afraid if she painted it some of the pop corn would just fall off. I will past this information on to her. Thanks again for your quick and helpful response.

You are welcome grandma. I hope you get this follow up in your mailbox. She should wipe the ceiling down as much as she is able. She doesn't have to overtax herself and put in a lot of elbow grease. Just wipe it to make sure any debris comes off before she paints. A good sturdy duster with an extension wand should do the trick. She will want to use a primer first and then the good paint.

I agree with RubyPitBull that renoving the popcorn is a nasty job. Whether you plan to keep or sell the home I feel that project to be worthwhile. Removal can be facilitated by using a pump sprayer to wet the material, and using a wide blade it comes off like cottage cheese. After removal, you might consider screwing the sheetrock to the ceiling joists. If nails were originally used, the ceiling is sagging. Then the ceiling will have to be patched and textured. If you decide to paint the ceiling, use a sprayer rather than a roller. Once the popcorn is moistened by the paint, the roller will turn it to mush. Good luck

We painted out popcorn ceiling. They make paint just for that (it is really thin) and use the right roller (it is big and fluffy). A lot of the popcorn will come off, but not enough to be noticeable. Make sure to wear a hat and goggles, the paint goes everywhere with that kind of roller. Ours looked great when we finished, but was grueling work.

Thanks to Dr. D and Emland, you both gave me more good advice. As RubyPitbull said my daughter is just wanting to make it attractive enough to get rid of it as soon as possible with as little expense as she can. She has lost six months of house payments due to bad tenants. She is also doing all the caulking, painting and cleaning herself. I picked up her daughter from school to help her out and went over there. She had already painted it yesterday and it does look so much much better. She has decided to paint the rest of the rooms. Maybe all this good information everyone has given me will be some help to other that read this. I tried to rate your answers but my computer kept giving me a error so I will try later. Thanks a lots.