ABOVE: Before, an uneven, water-stained popcorn ceiling and inefficient light fixtures dragged down this False Creek townhouse.
ABOVE: After, the ceiling was replaced with improved sound-proofing insulation, a light-bounching smooth ceiling, recessed lighting and crown moldings. News of the 15-per-cent federal tax credit on renovations up to $10,000 has many condo-dwellers looking around their homes to see what needs to be improved first.
It may be time to look up.
As long as it isn’t falling, most of us tend to ignore our ceiling, but we notice them in other homes. The old popcorn ceilings, so popular in cheaper-built buildings, have a way of holding the place down. Chances are they’re grey, dusty and might even have a water stain or two. Many bear scars of ceiling fixtures of yore or bad patch-up jobs after they were removed.
The popcorn ceiling isn’t easy to restore to its new state, which, let’s face it, is no great feature to begin with. The patch-up gunk available in small tubs at your hardware store never quite matches the patterning of the original blown or rolled-on cellulose product and is inevitably too white once it’s applied.
In my popcorn-ceiling-infested building, some owners have had enough of the stalactite look and have painstakingly scraped it off, only to discover that the bumpy stuff has a purpose after all: to hide the uneven seams on the drywall. What started as a simple facelift became a pricey — and drywall-dusty — renovation to replace the ceiling altogether.
Some people choose to simply repaint their ceilings white, which effectively reduces the shadows, visually flattening the ceilings. That’s the good news. The bad news is that painting the popcorn makes it much more difficult to eventually remove, as it’s no longer a scrape-off job but a nasty sanding operation. (Ka-ching!)
Still, there’s nothing that lifts a tired, older apartment like a smooth, light-bouncing ceiling with recessed lighting, preferably set with dimmer switches. If the popcorn’s getting to you and the current tacky halogen track lighting — or worse, the $9.99 “nipple” ceiling fixture — is casting a pall on the place, it might be worth taking down the drywall altogether and installing a grid of four to eight pot lights before a smooth new ceiling is installed. The lights can bathe the entire room in light or be directed onto artwork, visually expanding the walls. And as all designers will tell you, lighting is everything.
Still not convinced that ceilings are a worthy condo reno? While you’re at it, you can have the old insulation replaced with a superior sound-proofing product to reduce noise between the ceiling and floor above.
