Texture & Surface

Applying texture is straightforward. Matching existing texture is not, and it is where most repairs give themselves away. The variables are the compound's consistency, the spray tip and pressure, the distance and angle, and — for knockdown — how long you wait before you knock it down. A few seconds either side changes the whole character of the surface.

So it gets sampled. We spray a test board, adjust, and spray again until it reads as one surface with what is already there. A patch you can find from the doorway is not a finished repair, however good the drywall work underneath it was.

Knockdown and orange peel dominate South Florida ceilings and, in a lot of housing stock, the walls too. That is partly fashion and partly practical: texture hides minor imperfection and movement, and it forgives a substrate that a smooth wall would put on display.

Going the other way — texture to smooth — is a bigger job than it sounds. It is not sanding the texture off; it is skimming the whole surface flat, which is a Level 5 finish applied to a ceiling. Worth it in the right room, and worth knowing the cost before you commit to it.

Popcorn ceilings installed before the early 1980s may contain asbestos, and the only way to know is to have a sample tested by a lab. That test is inexpensive and it should happen before anything disturbs the ceiling, not after.

If it comes back positive, removal is licensed asbestos abatement work — a separate trade with separate credentials, and not something we take on. If it comes back clean, it is a normal, messy, entirely routine job and we are happy to do it.