Max Strip Painted Popcorn Ceiling Remover, Heavy Duty Gel, 1 Gal

This stuff works amazing where it can penetrate well. Prior to getting the stuffI tried scraping off a small section to test for asbestos and was crying that I started this job because without this stuff it would’ve taken me the rest of my life to get it off of my entire hallway. I rolled it on and then tacked some trash bags on it. I left it on for probably an hour and most of the areas came off like butter. The corners and some other areas required quite a bit of elbow grease but that was likely due to application error rather than the product. I was very pleasantly surprised how well it worked!

Terrible product. Doesn’t work has spots where it takes off the paint good but the texture doesn’t come off at all. $50 dollars down the drain. I hope you don’t make the same mistake I did and end up scraping your walls up trying to get rid of the paint and texture. I was hoping I wouldent have to buy a whole sander and sand down my walls but this product failed me.

I used 2 jugs of MS Popcorn remover to remove old texture from our bathroom. Product is great. I learned for Ease of Use to apply the 2 coats generously, THICK coats, cover with plastic and go back to scrape softened area not 4-12 hours later as packaging suggests BUT greater than 24 hours later. One patch I left covered for 3 days and it was so easy to remove. There is a finesse to the scraping process. I had much success using a 3” paint scraper and working in a fan-like motion. Areas above raw drywall were a touch harder to remove than areas previously primed or skimmed seams, which fell off in sheets. Product cleanup of warm water is easy. Product has strong artsy, ModgePodge-like odor that is easy to live with weighing against the other choice of choking down drywall dust. I learned a light MIl. Plastic is all that is needed. Cheap drop cloth from dollar store or even cut plastic bags from retail stores for small sections worked the best. My higher mil. Plastic was so heavy I felt obligated to use painters tape so it did not fall off and did not make a difference in this products performance. I found personal success working Max Strip Popcorn remover and the removal process in small 3x 4 sections at a time having several sections softening at different parts of the room at one time. This was easier on back,arms, neck and the mental aspect of a large project to conquer. I would recommend to any person!

I've been renovating most of the second floor in my home, all of which has popcorn ceilings from the 1980's. It's amazing how different rooms can vary in terms of how difficult it is to remove the popcorn. One room scraped off with the water method. 3 rooms were very difficult to remove, and one room I was able to sand off in less than an hour. Working in a hallway, I was able to scrape off most of it (honestly, some parts were just flaking off due to poor surface prep back in the day), but there were a few sections that I just couldn't get off without burning through tons of sandpaper or really damaging the sheetrock, which I wanted to avoid. So I resorted to this product. It's expensive, but generally has pretty good coverage. Out of the bottle it doesn't really smell, and looks like strange blue pudding. I applied it with a chip brush. The directions tell you to apply then cover it, as it "stops working" when it dries out. Well, someone tell this company it's difficult to cover a ceiling. Not wanting to hassle to try and cover the ceiling, I applied this, then would come back occasionally and spritz it with water from a pump sprayer just to keep it moist. I left it on overnight, then spritzed again with water to aid in scraping. It all scraped off fine and I would say did a great job. I'm not sure what's in this, but I think all it really is is a mild latex paint remover. I've discovered that even if popcorn wasn't painted (after install), it was somewhat common for contractors to mix latex paint in with the popcorn compound while spraying which basically makes the entire coating hard and unable to accept water. That's where this product comes into play. I also tried some CitrusStrip to an area of the ceiling and it worked in a similar manner. I then "rinsed" the area with water (basically a mop - how the heck do you wash/rinse a sheetrock ceiling?) before applying GARDZ which seals the sheetrock. So far so good. All in all I think it's good to have this for problem areas but at $50/gallon I'd say it would be too costly to use on an entire ceiling.

I started on a big kitchen in a 31 year old house, built in 1989 the heyday of popcorn ceiling application. I used a 6 inch fluffy roller to apply, while holding a plastic rolling pan close underneath the roller catch drips as I rolled (and it drips if you want to apply a thick coat as recommended). I used 1 mil plastic to cover the ceiling, as they recommend so product does not dry out. I used push pins to hold up, then used a broom to press plastic up to ceiling. It was activated after an hour, but we let it stay for 4-6 hours. I tried all kinds of scrapers, but liked a 6 inch putty knife with sharp edge, and a rectangle wash tub held under to catch majority of mess. DEFINITELY put plastic on any floors before you start scaping, even if you plan to catch scraps in a bucket like I did. The scraped popcorn makes a heavy mess, and the wet chunks will stick to the floor. I used a pump sprayer to spray water on the remaining "glue" mess and wiped in with a large sponge. This allowed me to scrape most to dump in trash. Whatever is left on ceiling you wash off with sponge. We will be skim-coating this ceiling, as some of the skim coat was scraped off, but did not damage any of the drywall. I also used on a newly painted smaller ceiling of an entryway. I scraped off after 4 hours. It was a little tougher to get off, and left a lot more residue. But wetting ceiling residue with the pump sprayer, I could scrape residue off easily, then wipe up with a sponge. Looks amazing, will not have to skim coat any of that ceiling. I just ordered 4 more bottles to do 5 more rooms. A couple hundred dollars and lots of sweat equity is definitely cheaper than replacing all the ceilings!!

If you have painted popcorn or some kind of textured popcorn look, don't use this. At least for us we tried the water spray method didn't work. Sanding with 40 grit, still didn't work. Tried this on a portion of the ceiling, it weakend the high points of the texture. Only a few spots it really scraped down to the base layer. It clumps up the material on the ceiling making a huge mess that's very sticky so lay some protection down. But ultimately because the person before us used a spray on popcorn texture that's hard like a rock. The only way around that is to skim coat with all purpose joint compound or take down the drywall and place new drywall. There's a guy on YouTube that explains it. If you have the soft Styrofoam popcorn ceiling, you don't need this, just apply water and scrape with tools. I'm not sure what this is exactly for. Cuz its excessive for regular popcorn, but not effective against textured or painted over popcorn. It also leaves a heavy smell that we hope gets hidden under paint and skim coat. Also the time it takes to apply it, then put saran wrap over it, then wait for it to settle overnight, then scrape, your better off with other options I said above. Save time and money.

I bought this to remove a heavy painted texture on my walls. It worked! But you have to be patient and allow it to time. This is much easier than skim coating over the texture for sure. I used a thick layer and covered it with the kind of plastic you use to wrap items when you’re moving. The plastic stayed in place but I kept the floor covered while removing the texture (it gets goopy). I used a metal spackle knife. Plastic does not work. I’m doing a small section at a time. Hope this helps, good luck.

We were trying to get Texture off our walls. I'm not sure what the texture was made of. We used the instructions on the bottle, painting on, waited 15 minutes, tried scraping. No result. Added a second, more liberal coat, waited 15 minutes, tried scraping. Only tiny miniscule amounts came off, barely worth mentioning. Turns out we then used warm water sprayed on and let that sit. Finally we were able to start scraping. To be sure that it wasn't just the two coats and extra time of the product, we tried the water on a different area. Same water result. We were able to start scraping better than using the Product. First photo shows wall texture. Second photo shows scraping from water where product didn't work.